Posted on 06/15/2020 4:36:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
The world is facing a time of great uncertainty. Amidst a pandemic, a global recession, and immense civil unrest, we are seeing global democracy also come under attack. China is using the current state of the world as an opportunity to continue their imperialist prospects by cracking down on the formerly autonomous city of Hong Kong and creeping into India.
The EU has been reluctant to condemn China for its actions in Hong Kong and its role in allowing COVID-19 spread. This leaves the United States with great responsibility, standing as the lone maverick against despotism. The question now becomes: what can we do and how do we protect ourselves? A huge part of the answer is energy independence, particularly a stable nuclear power supply.
Nuclear power is all around an incredible energy source. For one, it is very scalable, accounting for about 20% of the nation’s energy supply. This is due to the immense power produced each time a plant is fired up. One single uranium fuel pellet is capable of providing as much power as one metric ton of coal or 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas. This also makes nuclear the perfect energy source when disaster strikes and the grid needs more power. Furthermore, nuclear power emits zero CO2 to produce, making it the largest clean energy source in the country. In addition to these baseline benefits, we need a stable supply for our navy operations.
The navy currently operates 101 nuclear reactors that power our aircraft carriers and submarines. Due to the concentration of fuel in each uranium pellet, ships can operate for 20 years without refueling. This gives us an unprecedented advantage on the seas. This advantage helps keep America, and much of the world, safe from the perils of oppressive regimes and bad actors.
Unfortunately, this key advantage is at risk of being lost. The pandemic and recession have only weakened our commercial nuclear energy suppliers and many will be on the brink of shutting down soon. The breakdown of the commercial nuclear energy industry threatens our Navy’s access to research, development, and uranium fuel. This is occurring while China and Russia are in the process of ramping up their nuclear energy industries. To make matters worse, our uranium supply chain is deeply problematic.
Most of the uranium fuel supply for nuclear reactors in the US came from domestic sources in the late 1960s and early to mid-1970s. Since then, however, the amount of domestically sourced uranium has been on the sharp decline and today it accounts for only a fraction of our supply. Though much of our uranium fuel comes from stable democracies like Australia and Canada, there is still a good portion coming from Russia and China.
It is clear that we must reinvigorate the commercial nuclear energy sector and rethink the way we obtain uranium. For starters, we can remove the archaic and overbearing regulatory barriers that are currently in place that don’t provide a net societal benefit. For example, regulations should be based on calculated risk and safety rather than arbitrary numbers like they are based on today. No nuclear project should take over a decade to approve.
Additionally, the Department of Energy should fulfill their contracts dating back to the 1990s with energy companies and begin collecting nuclear waste in a national repository. Because the DOE failed to do so, temporary storage of nuclear waste costs the taxpayers $2 million per day, making the national repository the most economical action for both energy companies and the taxpayer. The government should also embrace public-private partnerships to carry out important advanced nuclear research in order to meet the needs of both the public and private sectors.
Lastly, we need to obtain our uranium more responsibly and establish a national uranium stockpile. By authorizing more domestic uranium development and obtaining the rest from allies like Canada and Australia, we will shrink the global influence of countries like Russia while also ensuring our national security interests are addressed.
Nuclear power is crucial to our national security interests. Without it, we lose military strength and weaken American energy dominance. Scaling back regulations, reestablishing the national nuclear repository, and obtaining responsibly sourced uranium will translate to renewed investor confidence in nuclear power. Investments in nuclear power in the private sector will revitalize our commercial nuclear energy industry and, in turn, allow our Navy to retain their major advantage.
The United States is exceptional. We need to protect it for generations to come by embracing nuclear power again.
A little Nookie never hurt anyone........ Larouche bumper sticker circa 1973
-——establish a national uranium stockpile.-——
I’m pretty sure such a stockpile presently exists in Oak Ridge Tennessee. It includes Uranium from Libya that includes the Uranium from Iraq Saddam sent to Gaddafi his contractor
More Nukes, Less Kookes - my car via 1979
Jane Fonda Goes Down More Than Nuclear Plannts - my car via 1979
Why can’t we dispose of nuclear waste for basically free by dropping it into the deep parts of the ocean? At power plants, we put it in swimming pools and that keeps everyone safe.
>>the amount of domestically sourced uranium has been on the sharp decline and today it accounts for only a fraction of our supply. Though much of our uranium fuel comes from stable democracies like Australia and Canada, there is still a good portion coming from Russia and China.
Maybe Lady Clinton shouldn’t have given Russia our domestic uranium supply.
Are u still sane? U propose contaminating the entire ocean for millions of years with radioactive wastes?
LFTR
It’s all about the salt.
Ultimately breeder reactors that convert unusable U-238 to the more useable Pu-239 or to convert unfisshionable thorium (Th-232) to fissionable U-233 can provide fuel for nuclear power for a couple of centuries.
Several nuclear submarines (with tons of fuel) have sunk to the bottom and the entire ocean is not contaminated. 15 feet of water in a swimming pool is enough to make anything outside that distance safe. The radioactive atoms mostly came out of the environment, diffuse ores in the ground, where they have been sitting safely for eons. Putting those waste atoms into cubic miles of water dilutes them back to the frequency those atoms had as ore. Plus we can burrow the canisters into currently stable sea bed and not too much more cost over just dumping and letting gravity settle the casks. Additionally, the “entire ocean” contains plenty of naturally occurring radioactive atoms that have weathered off the land over time, and the ecosystem has managed to live with it.
Several nuclear submarines (with tons of fuel) have sunk to the bottom and the entire ocean is not contaminated. 15 feet of water in a swimming pool is enough to make anything outside that distance safe. The radioactive atoms mostly came out of the environment, diffuse ores in the ground, where they have been sitting safely for eons. Putting those waste atoms into cubic miles of water dilutes them back to the frequency those atoms had as ore. Plus we can burrow the canisters into currently stable sea bed and not too much more cost over just dumping and letting gravity settle the casks. Additionally, the “entire ocean” contains plenty of naturally occurring radioactive atoms that have weathered off the land over time, and the ecosystem has managed to live with it.
Nuclear power has several serious problems. First and foremost, the left spent a huge amount of time trying in every way to make it economically unfeasible and so burdened with red tape and regulations, especially safety regulations, that it became for more unsafe.
Washington, D.C. bureaucratic overreach achieved new heights in grotesque regulation, most of which still exists today. Making a highly efficient safe energy source far more expensive and unsafe.
Next, the technology used is quite old and definitely needs to be upgraded.
Quite naturally all the critters will read the signs and avoid the area. And so the entire ocean food chain begins to die off.
Several nuke subs (with build-in containment features) do not equal the shear mega-tonnage of waste that would end up on the bottom in little more than concrete filled 50 gal barrels. A little bit, but not a deluge, nature can handle.
Besides there are technologies to recycle the ‘waste’. Not a new or cleaver idea. Plus your ocean biology sucks; I’m sure you can find dozens of peer reviewed papers on the subject.
Ninety-five percent of the fuel is still in the fuel assembly. Thank President Peanut that the recycling plants are not available here.
They do recycle large quantities of nuclear fuel in France. Japan has had reprocessed fifty tons of plutonium between the French, British, and other reprocessing venues.
“I’m sure you can find dozens of peer reviewed papers on the subject.”
I’ve looked around a bit and haven’t found much. If you have a pointer, please share. Recycling versus deep sea disposal is not either/or. Recycle as much as makes economic and public safety sense. Permanently dispose in miles deep water. If you’re really worried, put it into an active subduction zone where it will be pulled into the Earth’s interior. The only thing that radioactive atoms can emit are energetic particles and photons. Water absorbs all the energy of these emissions very well.
Not to mention some actual nuclear bomb tests detonated nuclear bombs under the sea. Got to wonder why you didn’t have the radiation spread all over the ocean like radiation replicated and spread globally in the film, “On the Beach”.
Radiation can’t “replicate” and it cannot contaminate water like a contagious disease. All of humanity’s nuclear waste will not significantly increase the radioactive atoms that are already in the ocean due to natural processes such as weathering of rocks. Those atoms have to be concentrated to do anything much. Water does not concentrate, it dilutes.
More people died in Ted Kennedy’s Oldsmobile than during Three Mile Island accident.
Cause currents exist.
I’m no expert, but I believe they use boron rods to absorb emitted neutrons. At least, that’s how the pool works in the reactor itself - the control rods are made of boron which absorbs neutrons. They can raise or lower them to control the speed of the reaction. It’s not the water that does it.
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