The U.S. Left Behind in Nuclear

What about nuclear fuel reprocessing.  I heard, at an energy conference from someone in the field, that with a certain generation of nuclear plants, much of the fuel can be re-processed or somehow re-used and thus generate less waste.
Who can comment on this?

1. reprocessing with fbrs
2. put the reactors by the sea
3. get support for new plants to be built, build plenty of reactors and voila, you have your expertise back.

It never ceases to amaze me how little public money (globally) is spent on fusion research. The biggest grant I have seen reported was for $50m which is a drop in the ocean when you consider the scale of the problem. Despite this, progress is being made and if VCs see fit to invest 9m, presumably hoping to make a return, perhaps we are closer than we thought to viable fusion energy?

Of course reprocessing is a good idea. currently we are disposing of 66% of the useful energy we start with. With reprocessing, we can take 3 spent fuel rods, and get two fully working ones back. When these two are “spent” we can still recover another 1.33 rods from those 2.

Reprocessing needs to be re-legalized in the US. NOW.

The US is already behind.

A possible view of the future is that the US first wave of nuclear build is only a few plants (i.e., the 4 projects that are DOE loan guarantee finalists) that start construction in 2012.

Meanwhile, China has 4 AP1000 units and tens of Generation II CPR-1000 units under construction today.

If all goes well for the Chinese nuclear program (i.e., no repeats of Olkiluoto 3); they will have a very capable industry with immense experience, proven results and a full supply chain by 2020, when the US has a few units that are just completing construction (if there are no ITAAC problems).

A global standard design may end up being a Chinese AP1000 clone.

A key reason for the difference is the role of government.  While some might argue that the absence of new nuclear plants in the US over the last 40 years is the result of market failure, it is clear that countries that have government control over the production and ownership of nuclear plants (e.g., China, Russia, and to a lesser extent Japan and Korea) are building nuclear power plants.

The US DOE Loan guarantee program is a start, but more is needed.

First of all i wanted to correct some of your figures:

NUCLEAR PRESENT:
Nuclear energy generates aprox. 16 % of ELECTRICITY worldwide NOT of “global energy. This 16% of global electricity generation corresponds to aprox. 6.5 % of global total primary energy, which is aproximately 3 % of world’s final “end energy”. (that means the energy that come to the customer).
The reson of this is that electricity generation worldwide accounts for aproximately only 20 % of end energy use.

Reality in Neclear reactor building is a constant decrease in the last 20 - 25 years, take a clear look on your nice graph from the world nuclear energy asociation. only < 100 reactors out of 439 reactors in operation worldwide are < 20 years old. That means, more than 80% of world nuclear reactors are more than 20 years old.
2008 was the FIRST year in total neclear energy history where there was brought NO nuclear reactor online.

NUCLEAR FUTURE:

According to the world nuclear energy association (IAEA) the number of reactors will reduce in 2015 to 350 and to 250 reactors in 2020. That would mean that in 2020 we will only have approximately 60% of todays nuclear power generation.
The reason of this is surprisingly easy: Building a neclear power plant takes a lot of time (actually between 6 and 10 years) and costs a lot of money (as you mention between 3000 and 10000 millones of dollares.
The best example one of the two nueclear power plants that are actually constructed in europe: In Finland, their new reactor was supposed to be constructed betwenn 2005 and 2009 for 3 billions of € (aprox. 4.5 billions of $). It is yeat clear that constructuion will not finish before 2010 and that it will take an extra cost of around 1.5 billions of € (aprox. 2.25 billions of $). This reactor could only be built because the “bayrische Landesbank” (a semipublic bank located in Bavaria from where nuclear reactor builder Siemens comes from) gave a credit for 1.5 billions of € with 2.4 % of tip, what is unusual across europe for private investments.

UK has the intention to build new reactors, but there is still no nuclear plant planned.
It’s more: UK said that they would not support directly construction, that money has to be provided by public funds. That means it will be very unlikely that only one nuclear plant will be built in UK without the help of government. It’s more: it is proven that nearly no nuclear power plant in the world would exist without direct or indirect help of respective government.

It’s a pity that you maybe have not realized that it’s time for a change and that nuclear energy is not necessary to cover our needs.

There are quite good examples in Europe that also highly industrilezed nations (as Germany and Spain) are able to decease their nuclear energy (Germany from 33 % to 23 % and Spain from 35% to 19% in the last ten years), bringing up renewable power generation inthe same timeframe up to 16% in Germany and up to 24% in Spain.

In times of restriced credit access, governments should be very carefully select in what to invest the public money and past and present proves that the nuclear energy option is no solution to absulutely no problem.

Think about it,

best regards,
Dietmar

The race to see who gets the very “green” nuke. A enviromentaly safe holocaust. bluehost host

One of the first plants I saw as a MS EE in Power engineering is the Waterford III plant in Tennessee.  I had previously seen the Bhakra Nangal dam on the mighty Indus river generating a total of 750 MW of power.  Waterford III generated three times that much, on a serene field of corn in the midst of nowhere.

We need to put aside the knee-jerk responses, and the voodoo economics of regulation and fuel management and look at the technology, to see that this is a big part of our energy solution.  Nuclear fuel is endless, the technology is still the best there is, despite 30 yrs of neglect, and we can catch up and go further, perhaps riding on the backbone of India and China.  The amount of spent fuel for a whole year is still just a high school gym in volume - never mind its enormous weight (of U235).

So I feel it is time we build more plants, or let India and China build it for us.