Posted on 03/04/2019 1:26:10 PM PST by yesthatjallen
What if I told you that we have at least 10,000 years of power available to us at this very moment and we just aren’t using it. Instead it sits in fields aging away doing nothing.
I am not joking! What we call Nuclear Waste is really a lie. Here is it really is: Fuel or the building block of fuel. The legacy plants used in the US use Uranium 235 at around 3% enrichment as a fuel source. After the Uranium 235 fuel is consumed the rest is considered waste.
What is left of the 97% is 96% Uranium 238 and 1% Plutonium 239. Plutonium 239 is really just a form nuclear fuel that was created when Uranium 238 absorbed excess neutrons from the reactor operating.
We can design (these plants have existed in the past and still do today) and build a plant that uses this Plutonium as fuel. It can also use the excess neutrons from fission to generate more plutonium from the leftover Uranium 238.
The average fission yield is 2.88 neutrons per fission of Plutonium 239. A critical reactor will consume 1 of the 2.88 neutrons. The remaining can be used to convert Uranium 238 into Plutonium 239. This is the principle behind a breeder reactor.
Literally breeder reactors generate power at the same time they generate fuel for future use. The power plants can literally consume what is incorrectly referred to Nuclear Waste. It is literally fuel.
If we built a Breeder reactor at 40 year old power plant that is the same size as the existing legacy plant it would take 1300 years to consume the spent Nuclear fuel from the legacy plant.
All over the US we have inactive and decommissioned legacy plants with spent fuel sitting idly by that we could consume as well. The leftover Uranium 238 from enrichment is literally wasted in the form of ammunition for high caliber rounds.
Plutonium is used as the primary stage for our nuclear weapons program. We use Plutonium in an uncontrolled fission reaction with tritium to cause a fusion explosion.
Instead I propose that we use these weapons from all over the world to power the world in a safe and environmentally friendly manner. Imagine this:
Chairman Kim sits down with President Trump and President Moon to use his nuclear stockpile to create power for North Korea instead of fear of weapons. He has not only used his nuclear weapons program to get access to world leaders but...
...He literally could use his stockpile to power his nation for rest of his life and his great great great grandchildren’s lives. This could be the realization of the video Trump sent to Kim watch at 2:20 after reading this.
The irony is that a socialist type country like France is doing it. They planned this from late 60s to early 70’s. France has no oil and limited coal so they had to do this to support their economy.
Thorium Molten Salt Reactors."
Dr. Alvin Weinberg predicted the coming of a second nuclear era.
While the author is technically correct I would say the author is also an incompetent moron talking about something about which ramifications he obviously knows absolutely NOTHING. Pu239 is the best stuff for atomic bombs. It has the smallest critical mass of any of the bomb materials. Once you start getting loads of Pu239 produced everywhere some idiot with a towel on his head is going to steal some and blow something up.
EBR-1 at the Argonne National Lab in Idaho was the first reactor to make usable amounts of electricity. It did so in 1951. This ain’t new science. Between reprocessing and fast breeder reactors, there was never any need for Yucca Mountain. But. Politicians. That’s all you need to know.
The standing wave reactor looked good for consuming depleted plutonium.
The China Syndrome was only a figment of Jane Honda’s bank account.
There were more deaths in Ted Kennedy's (D- HELL) Oldsmobile than caused by Three Mile Island.
Can’t we build a fast acting breeder reactor about 1,000 ft over Pyongyang?
Obama/Clinton sold all ours to the Russians.
Some additional material
Political pressure determined reprocessing fuel was “evil” so now we make fuel for nuclear powered ships by enriching newly mined uranium and storing the “spent” fuel in casks, waiting for a permanent repository to be licensed and built.
Breeder reactors have been built and tested since the 1950s. In the 70s President Carter decided that plutonium was “evil” and that the U.S. would lead the way that other countries would follow, and canceled the Clinch River Breeder Reactor demonstration plant to virtue signal our rejection of a plutonium economy.
The problem is not that we lack the technology, but that we lack the collective political will.
My dear departed father and grandfather were safety engineers in the nuclear industry. They maintained that the safety of nuclear energy was inversely proportional to the stupidity of those who operate the systems.
That is the future. Virtually no waste.
“Then go the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor route. These cannot be used to produce weapons grade Uranium and Plutonium.”
Fake news alert!
All of our uranium reactors produce pu-239.
Nuclear Waste: Fission Products And Transuranics From Thorium And Uranium
Extremely interesting but the REAL highlight comes around 13:30 in the clip.
Trust me, you'll know it when you see it :-P
See #36 above :-)
Yes but the fuel rods are heavily used thus they have a great deal of Pu240 which is impossible to chemically separate from the Pu239 and also makes the plutonium unsuitable for bombs.
this would seem the better approach.
YES
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.