The New Nuclear Revolution (WSJ Opinion by Bob Metcalfe)

Wall Street Journal Opinion ^ | June 24, 2009 | Bob Metcalfe

[angkor]

After the Internet, the next big thing will be cheap and clean energy. Coal, oil and gas pollute and are increasingly expensive: We need alternatives. Because nuclear energy (stored among particles inside atoms) is millions of times more dense than chemical energy (stored among atoms in molecules), nuclear reactors belong high on our long list of energy alternatives.

Nuclear energy is released during fission and fusion. During fission, large elements like uranium are split into smaller elements. During fusion, small elements like hydrogen are combined into larger elements. These two processes have occurred naturally since the beginning of time -- 13.7 billion years. The Earth is warmed naturally by its own nuclear fission reactors within and also by the sun, that big nuclear fusion reactor.

Today, 20% of our electricity is provided by 104 nuclear energy plants in the United States. These are already cheaper and cleaner than burning coal, oil and gas with all their pollutants, especially CO2. But these plants are all run on big old nuclear reactors, which nobody but the utility companies likes very much.

[snip]

Alas, we had to pass. The problem with their business plans weren't their designs, but the high costs and astronomical risks of designing nuclear reactors for certification in Washington.

The start-ups estimate that it will cost each of them roughly $100 million and five years to get their small reactor designs certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. About $50 million of each $100 million would go to the commission itself. That's a lot of risk capital for any venture-backed start-up, especially considering that not one new commercial nuclear reactor design has been approved and built in the United States for 30 years.

[pnh102]

It isn't that the average Democrat voter is "fooled." They are, as you say, communists. But they aren't fooled or misled into that thinking. They passionately believe in it and agree with it 100%.

That is the core of our problem. How do you get people to change their minds.

[PreciousLiberty]

“This is probably the way to go.”

Except any containment scheme here in the US becomes a political hot potato. Better to tell the teeming masses “we have a safe way to completely get rid of it”.

Now, the sane thing would be to get a new breeder reactor design going so we could a) reprocess 90% of the spent fuel into new fuel and b) start making weapons grade plutonium again. The United States is currently the only nuclear power that can’t produce new nuclear weapons.

Since we have 0bama in power, we’re hosed for a few more years though...

[UCANSEE2]

You are correct. The reality is that cars run on electricity already. Each car is essentially a generator powered by gasoline.

Now we want to remove the power for the generator, and ‘consolidate’ it into the National Electric Grid.

[Pan_Yan]

These are already cheaper and cleaner than burning coal, oil and gas ...

No. The existing plants are by no means cheaper to operate that fossil fuel plants. They are high maintenance and heavily subsidized. If the government got out of the way cheap, clean, efficient nuclear power plants could be built. But then again cheap, clean, efficient coal, natural gas and oil burning plants could be built as well.

Luckily, our government never lets the facts get in the way of politics.

[UCANSEE2]

The United States is currently the only nuclear power that can’t produce new nuclear weapons.

Shhhhhh.......

You might scare people by telling them the truth.

[Pan_Yan]

The reality is that cars run on electricity already. Each car is essentially a generator powered by gasoline.

What? Every vehicle I've ever worked on had an internal combustion engine that converted the chemical energy of the fuel to rotational mechanical energy that was tranferred by direct mechanical means to the wheels. The electricity produced by the alternator and sent to various systems is necessary, but it does not move the vehicle.

[The Great RJ]

Part of the problem is that US nuclear plants were basically individual designs. The French, who produce the vast majority of their electricity from nuclear plants, took a single design, ironically created by Westinghouse, and used it for all of its nuclear reactors. That made construction cheaper and faster, allowed for standardized training for reactor operators and safety lessons learned at one plant could be shared by all.

Clearly modern engineering techniques not available in the 1950s and 60s when most civilian US reactors were designed as well as decades of experience with safe reactor designs used by the US Navy could allow the development of safe and efficient nuclear plants. However their construction will take years of permits and fighting lawsuits from environmentalist whackos before one could ever get built. Instead under Obama's leadership we will spend billions to build forests of windmills and cover hundreds of acres with solar panels so we can swelter or shiver in our darkened homes and watch US jobs go overseas to countries with chaper energy costs.

[CPOSharky]

The US Navy has been running small nuke plants for how long?

[Pan_Yan]

There is much that the Navy has learned about nucs that can be applied to civilian plants, such as chemistry and CRUD control, but much of it does not translate. It’s like trying to take Indy car technology and applying it to dump trucks. Navy reactors are concidered spent when only a small fraction of their fuel is gone because they muct be able to meet maximum performance at all times. Civilian plants want to squeeze every KWH out for as long as possible.

[Nuc1]

The largest costs incurred in building a nuclear power plant are the delays in building and start up caused by frivolous lawsuits initiated by the left. These lawsuits have one purpose. Cause great delay. And that delay costs a great deal of money. The cost and uncertainty regarding the courts stopped nuclear plant construction cold. They were very successful.

[Pan_Yan]

Sub pusher SSN 668

My boat was on pier 21 with the Spadefish for a couple of years.

[Jabba the Nutt]

"Coal, oil and gas pollute and are increasingly expensive:..."

They're only expensive due to government policy. Change the policy, see the costs come down. I think passing the idiotic climate bill will make this inevitable.

Nothing against nuclear, which also suffers from government policy.

[El Gato]

If they are small and transportable they are a potential problem!

They'd be transportable if you have a nuclear submarine, cruiser or aircraft carrier to move them about. :) Oh, or in an ice breaker, the Russians have several of those.

We've had small nuclear power plants almost from the beginning. Naval nuclear plants. You could mount the most recent designs on barges, then tow them into place. For inland areas you'd need to prepare a "pond" off of a navigable river.

We've had the ability to do it since at least the early 1960s. Of course the enviro-wackos would have a whole herd of cows over the notion. Since they continue to be in the cat-bird seat, it's not going to happen any time soon. Probably not in my lifetime..baring significant, and probably "unsettling" change. We can only hope.

[Kevmo]

from the article:

Mr. Metcalfe is a venture capitalist with Polaris Venture Partners in Waltham, Mass. He is a trustee of MIT and a 2005 recipient of the National Medal of Technology for leadership in the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet.
***Ethernet, of course, has zero to do with nuclear power. Our energy future is tied with nuclear, but not fission.

The Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2266921/posts
Sunday, June 07, 2009 7:50:26 PM · by Kevmo · 76 replies · 854+ views
Suppressed Science.Net ^ | 12/06/08 | http://www.suppressedscience.net/

The End of Snide Remarks Against Cold Fusion
Friday, June 05, 2009 5:56:08 PM · by Kevmo · 69 replies · 926+ views
Free Republic, Gravitronics.net and Intrade ^ | 6/5/09 | kevmo, et al
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2265914/posts

[Costumed Vigilante]

China, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and their bought-and-paid-for whores in Congress and the White House all want America bleeding money, crippled with suicidal energy taxes and self-inflicted bureaucratic paralysis.

Domestic enemies of the Constitution are in power.

A verbis ad verbera

[Citizen Tom Paine]

Put the radioactive materials in a ceramic matrix, place them in a subducting zone to burn out and the will be relatively safe when they return to the Earth’s surface in about 250 million years.

But the cretins which now rule us can’t understand this.

[PreciousLiberty]

"will be relatively completely safe"

There, fixed it. :-)

[Clint Williams]

The left wants to split society into warring factions.

We should give them what they want. Right against left: give no quarter, take no prisoners.

That would solve a whole slew of problems in an instant.

[yawningotter]

I was just thinking about powering homes and buildings, not charging electric cars. One mini reactor would power every house in my county, or make it two to account for businesses and future growth. Install these things near where they will be needed, and you won’t need the grid like you do now. There will be no reason to transmit power hundreds of miles from the power plant to the city. As for powering cars, DRILL BABY DRILL!!!

[UCANSEE2]

but it does not move the vehicle.

True.

The electricity produced by the alternator and sent to various systems is necessary

Absolutely true.

Maybe I should have said it this way.

"Each car is essentially a mobile generator mechanically driven around by gasoline."

All we are doing is eliminating the gasoline and engine from the car.

In future, the gasoline (or other carbon-based fuel) and the engine it runs will be consolidated at large plants, and the resultant electricity will be distributed through the electrical grid to your vehicle. Of course the 'cost per mile' will be much, much higher than it is for 'gasoline' right now.