So-called nuclear waste still has 97% of its electricity potential yet to be realized.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, columnist on energy literacy at America Out Loud NEWS, and advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Oliver Hemmers has a Doctorate in Physics from the Institute of Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He was a Researcher in Physics, the Executive Director of UNLV’s Harry Reid Center and C- level executive.
Steve Curtis has a Master’s degree in Health Physics from UNLV. He has spent decades studying spent fuel issues in Nevada and worked as a technical field team leader for nuclear search and characterization missions for the Department of Energy. He is currently engaged in education, speaking, and writing in favor of nuclear power returning to the United States, especially from recycling spent nuclear fuel in fast reactors.
Co-authored by Ronald Stein, Oliver Hemmers, and Steve Curtis
Published December 23, 2024 at America Out Loud NEWS
Today’s so-called nuclear waste is only slightly used nuclear fuel, as only about 3% of its potential has been realized before it is classified as “waste”. Thus, we are burying fuel which still has 97% of its potential for generating electricity that has yet to be realized.
Here’s an energy analogy:
- Imagine your outrage if the United States’ policy was: If you fill up your gas tank, you can only drive your car twenty miles before you must empty the tank and store the remaining gas in a certified container to be buried in the ground forever and pay extra for the privilege. Sounds like a policy that would not be beneficial to US citizens. It may even motivate you to protest loudly and fire all the leaders that imposed that on you. Well, this is the policy we labor under today when we use some of the nuclear reactor fuel’s potential.
For over 70 years, nuclear has been producing the safest, emissions free, most reliable, and least expensive electricity for France, the US Navy, and others around the world, that is available today.
We pay huge government subsidies for wind and solar to generate occasional electricity, depending on favorable weather conditions, and much smaller subsidies for coal, natural gas, and nuclear to generate continuous, uninterruptable, and dispatchable electricity.
For nuclear generated electricity, our government has struggled for almost 45 years to fulfill their responsibility to “dispose” of our “nuclear waste”. Since only about 3% of the electricity potential is realized from this fuel, let’s call it slightly used nuclear fuel (SUNF).
Today, we are on the crown of a revolutionary innovation in electricity production, held back only by our Federal Government.
It turns out that a technology for producing electricity most efficiently is one called “fast reactor recycling”, or “fast breeder reactors”. If you want more technical terminology, one design is called “molten salt reactors”. Surprisingly, this technology has been around since before the current light water reactor technology existed, but political factors moved the dial toward the less efficient technology of light water reactors. Again, to be fair, light water reactors have worked well, has produced extremely low-cost electricity, and has the best industrial safety record in the United States. But if we can do better, why not?
Since plenty of uranium was available in the early days for light water reactors, it was thought that we did not have to recycle our nuclear fuel after we used only 3% of the available potential. This left the sticky issue of “what happens to the SUNF left over”? The best brains in our government could only come up with: “why not bury it in the ground?”
Well, burying that slightly used fuel sounded good in the late 1970s, so our President, Jimmy Carter, created an executive declaration that it would be forbidden to recycle our SUNF. So, it was stated, and so it was ordered.
The SUNF materials were collected at nuclear sites around the US. Again, to be fair, the material is compact, solid, and very safely stored, so the solution seemed to be OK until a later generation could venture a better solution. But no generation has yet done so.
The promise of electricity from nuclear power proceeded and President Reagan rescinded the recycle ban of SUNF in 1982.
“Let’s bury the SUNF” initiated resistance. The pesky Constitutional issue of states’ rights popped up and no state would “consent to accept” the stuff, even though Federal law ordered them to (well, to be fair, ordered Nevada to take it). Like anything forced upon anyone, it was met by fierce resistance. State’s rights won out and Nevada has been successful in denying acceptance of this material to this day, despite the Federal Law being still in force. So much for big brother’s bully stick.
Today, we have amassed about 90,000 tons (a volume that can fit in a large Walmart store-sized building). Yet still, no “burial” solution is forthcoming from the Federal Government.
- Storage: there is enough SUNF in storage to power the entire USA for centuries to come and enough depleted uranium in storage to last for several thousand years at today’s electricity production rates for the entire US.
- Production: In addition, there is more SUNF produced per year from the existing nuclear power plants (that only power about 20% of the US) than what would be needed to power the entire US with electricity from fast-reactors with the SUNF produced by light water reactors. Unless we shut down the existing nuclear power plants we will never catch up with fast reactors
Technology exists today (remember, since the late 1940s) to fission, essentially, all the remaining 97% of the fuel. This means (rounding down) 30 times more electricity can be produced from this SUNF (slightly used, right?). Better yet, we have privately capitalized companies with technology that is ready to go. At 10 cents per kWh (nobody gets electricity that cheap anymore), the material sitting on our reactor sites now is worth $100 trillion.
- Yes, that is three times our national debt. It is equivalent to $300,000 per person in the United States.
- It is enough to power the current US demand for 270 years.
Nobody has been hurt or killed in 70 years of normal commercial operation of nuclear reactors around the world in 70 years and nuclear power supplies 10% of our worldwide electricity that is continuous, uninterruptable, dispatchable, and zero-emissions. The land mass for nuclear is miniscule compared to that for wind and solar, that can only generate occasional electricity under favorable weather conditions.
Chernobyl was not an accident in the normal operations of a nuclear reactor since all safety provisions were purposely defeated to allow the accident to happen. It is misleading to call it an “accident”.
Today, nuclear waste is the key to Unlimited Electricity, as that “so-called nuclear waste”, the slightly used nuclear fuel (SUNF), still has 97% of its electricity potential yet to be realized.
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I knew nuclear “waste” wasn’t completely used up, but I had no idea 97% of its energy was still available. That would be criminal in any sane society.
But is there 97% consensus about this revelation, is the burning question.
(see what I did there?)
Radiating with possibility
a powerful point
The reason it is pulled from the reactor is because the decay nuclei absorb neutrons needed to sustain the reaction. If it were to be reprocessed to remove those lighter isotopes, it could work again as fuel.
The problem is that some of the U238 in the fuel (so-called “depleted uranium” – which is almost stable) absorbs neutrons during the reactions, spit out an electron, and becomes Plutonium 239. Since people associate plutonium with bombs (it is a perfect one-for-one swap with U235 in fuel and should be used in rods), idiots in the anti-bomb movement convinced President Jimmy Carter to ban reprocessing breeder reactors.
Some of the decay nuclei are pretty nasty as far as radioactivity is concerned, so we will still need some way to store those long term when we centrifuge them off, but that is less than .0001 of the starting mass of a rod.
All of these issues have engineering solutions if engineers were just allowed to get on with it.
I was always under the impression that the reactor designed to create the U238-P239 reaction was approved because it would produce materials for bombs and why Thorium was initially bypassed…Thorium = No Bombs
Uranium fueled reactors always contain some U238 (which is not fissile) because it is part of natural Uranium and cannot be entirely removed when selectively processing Uranium to increase the U235 (fissile Uranium) fraction as is needed for nearly all Uranium reactors. Thus, all Uranium reactors generate some Pu239. The only question is how much. With clever reactor design, Uranium fueled reactors can be built which generate more Pu239, in terms of energy content, than the original U235 fraction it started with. Such machines are termed breeder reactors. Thorium is a different issue. Thorium has only one isotope, Th232 which is not fissile meaning that by itself it will not engage in fission reactions. But when exposed to neutrons from nearby Uranium or Plutonium fission, which release lots of neutrons, it will convert to U233 which is fissile. Again with clever reactor design, reactors which breed U233 from Th232 have been built. One was tested in the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in the 1970’s. U233 can be used to make new reactors or bombs but this isotope is itself quite radioactive making fabrication of either such device more difficult and making the detectability of a U233 bomb more likely, hence the focus on Pu239.
The original reprocessing technology was called the “Purex” process and was intended to separate bomb grade plutonium. This was the purported reason Carter ordered the ban because he did not want it to fall into the wrong hands.
But there was an alternative process called the “Civex” (sp?) process that separated the plutonium that could then be used for fuel. But that process left highly radioactive daughter products in with the plutonium so it could only be handled with shielding and automation due to its lethality. That would prevent even sophisticated thieves/terrorists from making off with some for a bomb.
I would suspect the new pebble-bed reactors they have running commercial in China should be able to use this slightly degraded nuclear fuel.
Chinese pebble-bed reactor passes “meltdown” test — ANS / Nuclear Newswire
Small building with 2 units at at total of 200MW.
I expect we will see them, or similar units, starting to pop up all over the place, in China for a start then spreading.
IIRC there is a similar one commissioned for experimentation somewhere in the US.
I meant to post a different link
The Shidaowan reactor is now operating commercially.
<p>China’s demonstration HTR-PM enters commercial operation</p> – World Nuclear News
There is no experimental reactor planned for the US, but Dow Chemical and Amazon are interested in deploying a pebble bed reactor in the US.
Found this.
Construction of US’ 1st fourth-gen nuclear reactor ‘Hermes’ begins
Decades of anti-nuclear propaganda have had a regrettable effect. It is interesting to research the origins of the large sums of money used for the propaganda. I researched funding for a small but vital part of the propaganda, that related to the scientific misuse of the Linear No Threshold, LNT, theory of dose/harm relationships of toxins including uncontained nuclear radiation.
The origins went back to Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s. The deception could have been stopped by them in the 70 years since, but in sadly prevalent post-modern style, they have doubled down. Current Rockefeller Foundation reports show massive funding and encouragement for harsh anti-nuclear projects. Yet, it is possible that most of the US population knows little of this anti-nuclear propaganda and regard Rockefeller Foundation as benevolent and caring and leading the ways that Charity is so good for society. This is propaganda used with duplicity and knowing mistruth, nuclear bad, Rockefeller good.
Simply search WUWT for Sherrington Rockefeller for the analysis, fault it if you can.
The management of used nuclear fuel involves other opposition groups besides Rockefeller. You would be doing society a public good to track them down and publicise their propaganda when it uses scientific misinformation. Geoff S
“Decades of anti-nuclear propaganda,” and decades of intentionally NOT teaching the critical thinking skills necessary for success in science or engineering! Climate “science” is just one of the disciplines where real world data and skills are subordinate to the ideology and the models; all other hard sciences are now infected with the “what you should think” virus! True science is skepticism!!
‘The origins went back to Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s. The deception could have been stopped by them in the 70 years since, but in sadly prevalent post-modern style, they have doubled down.’
It’s a basic economic fact that commercial cartels cannot survive the competitive forces of a free market. The Rockefellers learned this lesson early in the Progressive Era and have been using the regulatory state to advance their interests ever since.
I have always thought it is odd that the Greens accept as gospel everything the IPCC and UN say about climate change but have always rejected everything the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) says about nuclear power.and radiation.
Fort St. Vrain Pebble Bed Gas Cooled Reactor? 1979 – 1989.
And technology has advanced enormously since then. ! See above
The Fort St Vrain HTGR used fuel containing pellets encased in a graphite rod, that was inserted in prismatic graphite blocks with channels for the Helium “coolant” (actually heat transfer fluid). It was NOT a Pebble Bed reactor.
General Atomics HTGR’s were designed to use a Thorium cycle. Being a “thermal” as opposed to a fast reactor, the HTGR is not well suited for using a Plutonium cycle.
General Atomics does has a design for a gas-cooled fast reactor, which can use spent fuel. It’s called the EM^2.
Plutonium is not a problem for thermal reactors. The current fleet of reactors are partially running off of the plutonium produced in the fuel during operation. The French reactors that use reprocessed MOX (uranium/plutonium) fuel are thermal reactors. A fast reactor is necessary to use the U-238 that comprises the majority of fresh and used nuclear fuel in the current fuel cycle. It is also useful for “burning” the other actinides that are produced as a result of placing fuel in a reactor — the long-lived nuclear “waste.”
GA has been doing design work on gas cooled fast reactors for at least 50 years. A couple of advantages of using Helium for the coolant is that it is inert and doesn’t get activated by the neutron flux. A strong disadvantage with respect to liquid metals is a requirement to circulate the coolant for decay heat removal, whereas conduction through liquid metal would be adequate for a small to midsize LMFBR.
The problem with Plutonium in thermal reactors is the inability to breed more fuel as only ~2/3rds of thermal neutron captures result in fission. Which reminds me, having studied what happens with neutrons in the core of a thermal reactor gave me a lot of insight into what happens to IR photons in a medium with resonance absorption lines, e.g. CO2.
Avoiding an energy blunder down-under – the unofficial title to a presentation by aussie Robert Parker to the (Australian) Institute of Public Affairs on the benefits of nuclear power generation.
It is the clearest, most compelling presentation of the game-changing advantages of nuclear generation I have found. The graph below is an example. Listen to the entire talk before you choose to disagree.
The article left out bits of the story. Light water reactors are designed to burn U235. U235 is 0.7% of uranium as it comes out of the ground. Normally it is concentrated to 3.5% in commercial reactors. 80% of the U238 is thrown out as depleted uranium at this stage. And that depleted uranium is still 0.2% U235. By the time the rods are pulled, they are 1% U235 and 1% plutonium and half the energy is coming from plutonium bred from U238. From memory, only 0.4% of the energy in the as-mined uranium is used, not the 3% stated in the article. It has to be under 0.7% because that is all the U235 there is. What is needed is fast breeder reactors. The Russians have operated sodium cooled fast breeders for decades so it can be done. So did the French. Fun fact – the best possible nuclear technology may not have been developed yet which might be lead-cooled fast breeders. The Russians are building a 350 MWe one at the moment.
Whatever we end up with, It needs to be much more efficient in the final extraction of radiation energy..
Needs to be able to be modular or scaled from small, say 100MW, to large, say 2GW
.. and to use a common system or fuel time for most installation.
Hodge-podge of several dozen designs using different fuel and methods is a recipe for inefficiency.
That’s the way capitalism works. Everyone wants to have a unique solution so you have to come back to them for (higher priced) maintenance, parts, fuel, etc.
Sort of like petrol v diesel car, with different grades of petrol etc etc, 🙂
I’m only saying what would be the most efficient if it could made to work for the bulk of cases.
Standardization is the opposite of innovation – if you want innovation, then you don’t want standardization.
Standardization is what comes after one figures out what method works best, and even then, overstandardization prevents continuous improvement and refinement.
Capitalism is not the enemy … it is the only way to get innovation. Governments never innovate.
Standardization is the opposite of innovation – if you want innovation, then you don’t want standardization.
Standardization is what comes after one figures out what method works best, and even then, overstandardization prevents continuous improvement and refinement.
Capitalism is not the enemy … it is the only way to get innovation. Governments never innovate.
One man’s “hodgepodge” is another man’s means of innovating and improving and testing and determining what works best … at least, what works better than what the other guy is offering.
The essence of competition – i.e., capitalism – is the fact that people are free to try out different stuff and prove their value in the marketplace.
We “standardized” on large scale light water reactors in the US … and that is precisely what inhibited (along with government over-regulation) development of the kinds of reactor designs that will in fact serve humanity well for thousands of years to come.
But we all KNOW competition is good.
/sarc
With fond memories of Ma Bell.
Every previous article I’ve read on the topic said current reactors use less than 1% of the fuel’s potential energy for electrical generation. 97% may represent the potential energy that can reasonably be extracted from the SUNF.
One of the more interesting fast reactor designs is the integral fast reactor based on the EBR-II at INEL. A couple of advantages, the fissile nuclides are not fully separated out from the fission products and the fuel cycle burns up much of the long lasting Actinides.
One problem with any fast reactor technology is dealing with the material (structure and fuel cladding) from fast neutrons.
OTOH, with some sort of breeder reactor technology, there would not be any need to mine Uranium for a number of centuries.
The French reprocess SUNF and use the recovered uranium and plutonium to fabricate new nuclear fuel. The US also had such plans and had begun reprocessing such when Carter shut down the effort from his concern that the recovered Plutonium could be stolen and used to make bombs. We then devised a plan to bury it in Nevada but Harry Reed, then Nevada Senator, shut it down. And here we are.
The true reason why the Yucca Mountain project was shut down is because it makes no sense whatsoever to be burying our spent nuclear fuel.
Sooner or later, whether it is fifty years from now or a hundred years from now, most all of that spent nuclear fuel will either be reprocessed into new fuel or will be reused in advanced reactors. It’s not an if, but a when.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) was never a sensible approach to managing spent nuclear fuel. The DOE knew that, the NRC knew that, and the Congressional staffs which had written the original NWPC law knew that.
The sensible thing to do is to store the spent fuel on the surface until the day comes that it becomes economical to either reprocess or reuse. And not spend many billions of dollars for no real benefit.
As for Harry Reid, his opposition was the vehicle that was used by people in the Congress who knew that burying our spent fuel made no sense to end a program which was a huge waste of money.
The Yucca mountain facility was a long term storage facility wherein the waste could be recovered. Harry Reed stopped it because he was opposed to the very idea of nuclear power. You are assigning to the Congress of the time far too much credit. Congressmen only vote for things that are in their political interest and the opposition of the time did not make it so.
Civilian slightly used nuclear fuel was only half the issue. Yucca Mountain was also supposed to take all of the MILITARY radioactive wastes from the DOE’s strategic materials program from Pantex, Savannah River and Hanford Reservation. The civilian slightly used nuclear fuel is technically the easy part. It’s the assorted materiels left over from places like Y-12 at Hanford that are the far more difficult problems.
Actually, no. US DOD weapons program transuranic waste goes to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico for permanent disposal in flowable self-sealing salt formations deep underground.
Spent fuel from naval reactors is shipped to the Idaho National Laboratory where the fuel rods are processed and put into long term dry storage.
Actually no. Dry storage is not long term.
I just stated the facts.
cgh: “Actually no. Dry storage is not long term.”
One has to define what is meant by ‘long term.’
It’s my own opinion that a dry storage cask should allow easy removal of the spent fuel rods so that the rods can either be reprocessed or reused, or else be transferred into a new cask if the old one has deteriorated to the point where its reliability is in question.
What happens if the rods inside a particular dry storage cask get stuck inside the cask for some reason? Maybe it was over-expansion of the rods, or an unforeseen chemical reaction of some kind. Whatever.
If this happens, we will figure out how to get them out safely; or if that is too much of a hassle, we will write off an individual cask and its stored rods and send them off to WIPP for permenent disposal.
At some point in the long term future, the world will eventually be running on a plutonium based economy. Whether that point is one-hundred years away or five-hundred years away remains to be seen.
Duane: “US DOD weapons program transuranic waste goes to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico for permanent disposal in flowable self-sealing salt formations deep underground.”
Another issue with Yucca Mountain was and still is that its host media, volcanic tuff, isn’t as good a host media as is the salt of the Salado Formation used by the WIPP facility in New Mexico.
Yucca Mountain could have been made to meet the performance criteria expected of an underground permanent repository through engineered features such as titanium drip shields. But only at considerably greater expense than what the completely dry salt of the Salado Formation costs.
The fact remains that: (1) the WIPP facility already exists and is operational, (2) its host media, the dry salt of the Salado Formation, is optimum for permanent storage of all nuclear wastes, including spent civilian nuclear fuel if we ever decide to permanently dispose of that fuel without reusing or reprocessing it; and (3) only a small portion of the area at WIPP reserved for future use has been employed by current WIPP operations.
Reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, and other kinds of nuclear-chemical operations, do generate wastes which have no further value. The WIPP facility has enough storage capacity available to easily handle a hundred years or more of these useless wastes, probably more than that.
Perhaps Michael Moore could make a documentary about spent nuclear fuel storage and call it
The SNUF Film
So we can recycle ‘wasted’ nuclear fuel instead of burying it in someone’s back yard that doesn’t want it and produce clean and cheap energy in the process. What’s the downside?
There isn’t any. Recycling used nuclear fuel is more expensive than using new uranium for nuclear fuel. But this really doesn’t matter. Used fuel can be stored indefinitely until such time as it is economically attractive to reuse it all. France has been doing this for four decades. Japan was doing this with all its used fuel. Britain did it with all of its used nuclear fuel from its Magnox reactors until the last of these was closed in 2015.
Sounds good to me, when do we start?
When Jimmy Carter and his political legacy is dead.
My skepticism kicked in over this statement:
least expensive electricity for France, the US Navy, and others around the world
I’ve delved into nuclear fission for a long time and everything in the paper affirms what I’ve learned except for it being the least expensive. There are some qualifiers around that statement: France, US Navy, and others around the world. Checking again just now, I was surpised to see that the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) globally from existing (old) nuclear power plants is indeed the cheapest, at least as reported by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency’s (NEA) 2020 study. It also states that power from new plants is projected to be twice as expensive, probably because of regulatory burdens and lawsuits from environmentalists that cause huge delays and cost overruns, as well as R&D costs from developing new, safer, and more efficient reactors. I expect that will go down dramatically if there is mass adoption of nuclear power, lots of manufacturers get in on it and compete for customers, and efficiencies accrue from production advancements like small modular reactors that could potentially be built on assembly lines.
Consider how this has increased the cost by billions per reactor
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear
The above article suffers from a lack of disclosure of several important facts about reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, what the authors charmingly refer to a “slightly used nuclear fuel”.
On a per kilogram basis for fuel used in commercial nuclear power reactors, the cost of such reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods is several times the cost of just mining, refining, enriching and encapsulating in new fuel rods the U-235 present in natural U-238 to the 3-5% concentration level necessary to power nuclear reactors.
Such reprocessing is necessary not so much as to restore the U-235 concentration to the upper end of about 5% as it is to remove reaction (decay) fission products that “poison” the U-235 chain reaction to the point that it becomes inefficient in developing heat.
So why hasn’t reprocessing “slightly used nuclear fuel” become popular world-wide? . . . follow the money.
The article’s analogy to only using a small fraction of the gasoline in a car’s gas tank is way off the mark by failing to state how the remaining 97% of gasoline in the tank has somehow been made unusable in the car’s engine and also so “toxic” that is must then be stored “underground”.
The article boldly states:
“Technology exists today (remember, since the late 1940s) to fission, essentially, all the remaining 97% of the fuel.”
without offering one single reference as to what that technology is (hint: proposed MSR reactors don’t use U-235/U-238 fuel mixes) and, moreover, where such has been demonstrated to be economically viable.
I also began, as I read, to think that the “article suffers” as you describe. The term “bury” is used and yet the stuff isn’t buried. Or is some buried?
The authors need to get help in writing something useful for reasonably intelligent people to understand. {Yes, I think I am reasonably intelligent. 😏}
The cost of processing spent fuel can vary over time … and the cost of mining, processing, and enriching uranium ore can also vary, as can the demand vs supply for reactor fuel. It’s a matter of technology and economics. The relative cost of reprocessed spent fuel vs “new” fuel is therefore not fixed.
In any case, the fuel cost for nuclear generated electricity is quite small – around half a cent per kw-hr. Most of the cost of nuclear generated electrical power is wrapped up in design, licensing, construction, operations (excluding fuel), and maintenance of the plants.
So you say. However, if anyone is to believe what the authors of the above article state:
“Today, we have amassed about 90,000 tons (a volume that can fit in a large Walmart store-sized building) . . .
“Technology exists today (remember, since the late 1940s) to fission, essentially, all the remaining 97% of the fuel. This means (rounding down) 30 times more electricity can be produced from this SUNF (slightly used, right?). Better yet, we have privately capitalized companies with technology that is ready to go. At 10 cents per kWh (nobody gets electricity that cheap anymore), the material sitting on our reactor sites now is worth $100 trillion.”
So, working through their projection, that slightly used nuclear fuel is worth (i.e., would supposedly be priced at) about $1,100,000 per kilogram, assuming their reference to “tons” was meant to be metric tonnes, at 1000 kg per metric ton) since the 94 currently operating nuclear plants in the US already have incurred the sunk costs of their design, licensing, construction, and operations/maintenance.
For reference, a 1000 MW nameplate capacity nuclear reactor in the US typically uses around 27 tonnes (27,000 kg) of 5% U-235/95% U-238 nuclear fuel each year.
Methinks the authors of the above article have made a serious
overstatementmistake regarding the cost benefits projected from reprocessing 90,000 tons of SUNF.And an additional reference: there are no commercial nuclear power reactors in the US that use MOX fuel (containing Pu-238, a byproduct of the U-238/U-235 decay chain arising unavoidably from the production of “thermal” neutrons) . . . thus, so much for asserting “recycling SUNF” for that reason in the US.
“Again, to be fair, light water reactors have worked well, has produced extremely low-cost electricity, and has the best industrial safety record in the United States.”
Typo.
“President, Jimmy Carter, created an executive declaration that it would be forbidden to recycle our SUNF. So, it was stated, and so it was ordered.”
Jimmy Carter, the thing that will not die.
At least he has finally given up the Worst President Evah title! And at 100 years of age he is orders of magnitude more mentally aware than Joe Bribe’im!
There are likely many things about nuclear reactors and nuclear power stations around the world that we do not know. Look at this statement
In April 2024, the government approved the completion of units №3 and №4 of Khmelnitsky NPP,[37] as well as the construction of new units No. 5 and No. 6 using American technology AP1000 has begun,[38] and the cost of construction of the general block will be approximately $5 billion.[39][40] On May 7, 2024, it was announced that the preparatory works for the construction of 2 new units No. 4 and No. 5 on South Ukraine NPP.[41]
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Ukraine
If the $US5 billion is correct then Nuclear is the cheapest for electricity production.
Also, from https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/united-arab-emirates
The UAE was starting from scratch with no regulatory system in place so the first construction took some time.
Next there is information that China has successfully run a Thorium reactor pilot plant and in 2023 started the construction of a full scale 300MW plant. China has not been open with its nuclear program. Some year ago on a visit to China I saw a nuclear plant (no coal storage or conveyors, no oil storage, no gas pipelines, but electricity transmission line). No one in the nearby village or the tour guides wanted to mention it, everyone turned away as though it did not exist. During that visit while I saw some brand new cement plants (China is now selling technology) I did not see one windmill or one solar panel. We visited the 3 gorges dam and its water turbines (capacity 22,000MW)
India is expanding its nuclear industry and I have seen that they have been researching Thorium reactors.
I looked at Google for more information. I found
thorium reactor china 2024 (Google Search)
In 2024, China has made several advances in thorium reactor technology, including:
In August 2024, China began commercial operations of the world’s first power plant with two thorium molten salt reactors in Shandong.
In January 2024, China announced plans for the KUN-24AP, a thorium-powered container ship that would be the largest ever built.
In October 2023, China completed a prototype thorium molten salt reactor (TMSR) in the Gobi Desert that produced 2 megawatts of thermal energy.
Thorium reactors have several advantages over uranium-based reactors, including:
Thorium reactors produce less long-lived radioactive waste.
Thorium reactors have improved safety features and a lower risk of meltdown.
Well, according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor ) that is not correct:
“China was the first country to operate a demonstration generation-IV reactor, the HTR-PM in Shidaowan, Shandong, which is a pebble-bed type high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. It was connected to the grid in December 2023, making it the world’s first Gen IV reactor to enter commercial operation. In 2024, it was reported that China would also build the world’s first thorium molten salt nuclear power station, scheduled to be operational by 2029.”
(my bold emphasis added)
A gas-cooled pebble-bed type nuclear reactor is far different and far less technically-challenging than a molten salt (cooled) nuclear reactor.
No no no to nukes!
Solar swing state: From nearly too much grid demand to warnings of not enough in less than a day | RenewEconomy
The sudden switch from nearly too much demand to nearly too little demand is symptomatic of the dramatic changes that are occurring on the grid, and one of the fundamental reasons why most energy experts thing the idea of shoe-horning gigawatts of inflexible nuclear power capacity into the grid would be nuts.
You just have to thing it through with logic101
If you are antinuclear, you are pro-blackout.
Some of the newer designs have a load following capability and so make this observation moot. Logic doesn’t appear to have entered the picture on that argument.
If we let the engineers be engineers, design solutions to grid stability will appear as if by magic.
Fear of a process that even occurs naturally, is unsound and really needs to be treated.
(evidence in some uranium deposits in Africa of sustained nuclear reactions for quite some time in the past are extensive, and yet the area life was not affected.)
You should read the entire article.
You should also note it is a pro-solar website.
You should also note that “many energy experts” does not give a single reference or link.
It has all the characteristics of an opinion piece (or was that Russian disinformation?).
Unfortunately, one needs higher enriched Uranium to keep the fission reaction going if one uses nuclear waste, which according to some people is a nuclear proliferation risk. When IRAN finally
has their bomb I don’t think this will be relevant anymore, since they’ll sell the technology to other rogue states.
Oh, those terrible Persians, again….
That’s now how it works. Iran doesn’t need to “sell the technology” to anyone. This is technology that was developed over half a century ago and is accessible to anyone who wants to use it. It is only a matter of committing the resources and not being caught by the international community. South Africa used the same method (with the help if Israel, supposedly) to develop an nuclear weapon back in the day.
How much radiation are nuclear plants allowed to leak? If the answer is zero, then nuclear power is impossible.
I don’t know why the downvote. It is obviously true that if the government unreasonably sets the radiation profile to a level lower than standard background radiation, no reactor will ever be permitted. Of course, such a ridiculous risk profile applied to any other aspect of life would find us all curled up in a fetal position in our beds, never to venture forth again.
The radiation leaks from Three Mile Island, if reports are correct, were less than natural background radiation.
A zero threshold? We can’t even wear cotton clothing and expect a zero.
How much radiation are coal-burners allowed to emit? The answer is not zero!
They do emit some.
NRC rules call for a maximum of 50uSv (5mREM) per year at the plant boundary. Average background dose is 1mSv (100mREM) to 3mSv (300mREM) per year. These rules were put in place in the 1970’s. I’ve measured 5mREM/hr at the surface of my chest a couple of hours after a Tc99m scan.
I read the article and all the comments, but did not find a real WHY the solutions they claim already exist have not been done. We have Trump, Musk and Vivek in power. How or why won’t they do this?
The basic reason is that the alleged problem of nuclear waste isn’t an actual problem, one which warrants either quick action or the near-term expenditure of a lot of money in the face of a federal deficit which is completely out of control.
Thank you for your reply, Yes, the deficit is out of control. But the SUNF has been around for half a century. We are buying uranium from the Russians, The whole point of the article it said is that the SUNF, using existing technology developed by private companies, could be used and save the US $100 Trillion. Why are those with that technology, other than because of lack of still valid patents, not pushing it? Public fear, the lack of a patent and fossil fuel sellers’ lobbying against it seems much more likely, but I could not tell from the article or the comments,
The reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel here in the US must await some future confluence of politics and nuclear energy economics which then drives the need for SNF reprocessing to go critical mass. Here in the year 2024, we are far from reaching that point.
The world taken as a whole is awash in fossil energy. But not every nation has easy access to that abundance of fossil energy within their own borders.
As things stand today, nuclear power is strictly a public policy decision. A nation buys nuclear power because it values energy security and reliability above all other considerations, including cost, and is willing to pay a premium price for nuclear generation as opposed to gas-fired or coal-fired generation.
France is the most prominent example of a nation which relies on nuclear generation for purposes of energy reliability and security. It reprocesses a portion of its spent fuel for the same reason, to keep a portion of its nuclear fuel supply within its own borders, knowing full well that buying fuel on the world market might be cheaper on purely a cost basis.
A point will come in the long term future where nuclear generation in the US is truly competitive with gas-fired and coal-fired generation strictly on a cost basis, with no other considerations involved.
Supplying once-through nuclear fuel is currently a profitable business in the US. An early resumption of nuclear fuel reprocessing could only be done by a government-owned corporation with deep pockets. And with the probable result that a now-profitable privately-run enterprise would no longer be in business.
Thank you for your reply. You are right that nuclear power is public policy decision. The current electric rate in the US is between 11cents and 16.5 cents per kwh https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
I have long agreed that the world is flush with fossil fuel, but like the wind, sun, tides, etc., it is the cost of collecting and converting it to electricity. There is a sweet spot for oil, gas, coal etc. If it is too high, demand drops off. If it is too low, the cost of extraction prohibits it. The article claims that 10 cents per Kwh is possible. I exchanged emails with the lead author and he says, “It’s still public fear and ill prepared American policymakers incapable of discussing and promoting the obvious, as the new nuclear activity is pretty much around the world, but outside the borders of America.”
Blame Jane Fonda and the movie The China Syndrome.
As I posted, follow the money.
This is good news, so we can get possibly get upto 97%, but this will obviously be used for National Grids, but we still need portable energy as mainly used in Transportation viz., Kerosene to fly & Diesel for Shipping etc.
EV’s being Lithium & FossilFuel resource dependent, let alone all the SCE’s (SupplyChainEmissions) always seemed to be not included or maybe under estimated.
I’ve seen estimates & commonly talked about that 1/5th to 1/4 of all Human Energy Use is such NationalGrid energy,the remainder 3/4 to 4/5ths is POrtable Energy, but we haven’t re-found where that figure is from anyone please? (1)
In addition according to the following website:
https://www.freeingenergy.com/when-will-we-run-out-of-fossil-fuels/
Humans have estimates of economical viable FF & Nuke reserves as:
Coal = 150 years
Oil = 50 years
Gas (natural) = 50 years
Uranium = 90 years
Of course extraction methods may improve & make these Fuels more viable or in desperation require, but these figures seem to imply Humans have only says a couple of Hundred years at most to live, as we do in such a deluxe FF based society? (2)
I’m assuming no Fusion break through & missed off Thorium, BUT surely all energy sources need the base COG’s (Coal, Oil & natural-Gas) to:
Mine for, Design, Muster, Construct, Spare & Repair, Support, Base Load all the way through to decommissioing? (3)
Elon’s Moon & Mars are just another waste of precious FF’s IMHO, both unliveable in any LongTerm reality, without continual ferrying of Provisions to each (1/6 & 13/ gravity, no tectonic plates, no atmosphere/Oxygen, NItrogen, CO2 etc., Food, Usable Water etcc. etc.)
3 questions that still bug me, even after 25 years when we ran BOINC climate models that were all too hot, hence our quest to find the truth, I’m certainly on Anthony’s WUWT side of the debate everyone?
On another front, the potential for fusion reactors is increasing with a Russian demonstration project and a first build in Virginia, thanks to MIT R&D.
Yeah, I heard that too . . . AGAIN. It’s still just 20 years or so away!
They oversold it, but new nuclear techs will be significant, some soon, more eventually.
Regardless of not consuming, actually producing more nuclear waste, Thorcon has great advantages
https://thorconpower.com/
Large, but modularly built, “low cost” relatively, needs no new tech, beats all existing techs, being built in Indonesia, mass produced price, $500,000,000 for 500 mw plant. So the first one will be much more, I would think billions of dollars. Thorcon has one under construction in Indonesia which won’t have all the regulation problems but will tie up its ability to expand in other places.
https://thorconpower.com/indonesia/
https://thorconpower.com/economics/
Each Thorcon 500 will send one cask to storage every four years. If Indonesia tripled its electricity consumption to 87 GW using only Thorcon power, she would have to devote a hectare (2.5 acres) of space every 9 years to storage.” So it does have a small used fuel problem. Possibly their waste could be consumed by one of the techs below.
https://thorconpower.com/fuel/
https://www.oklo.com/about/default.aspx Seems good, has permits, under construction, but first deployment in 2027.
Oklo has three project sites. Site use permit for its first site has been obtained from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2019, was awarded fuel for its first reactor from Idaho National Laboratory, and has the most “regulatory” traction [in the USA] of any advanced fission power system to date, targeting first deployment in 2027. Very much lower first units costs than Thorcon.Other nuclear companies that would consume the existing used and future waste from the current nuclear reactors
https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/
Is pursuing Thorium, but says it consumes waste, Good site
Their Thorium Reactor is expected to be online in 2029
https://www.moltexenergy.com/moltex-demonstrates-reactors-unique-capability-to-consume-nuclear-waste-and-close-the-fuel-cycle/
Very good info, but still in research stage.
https://curio.energy/#home
Good information, but no info on licensing or what or where they are building.
https://www.exodysenergy.com/
Very thin home page, but interesting
So, bottom line, Thorcon seems the winner in the race, but will still have problems in the US and other places due to size.
Oklo seems the best for the US and military bases, but since their “first deployment” will not happen until 2027, not likely to happen in Florida for years.
https://www.ans.org/news/article-6184/florida-studying-new-advanced-nuclear-power/
“State regulators will study the economic and technical feasibility of adding advanced nuclear technology in Florida. The directive was included in a sweeping energy bill, House Bill 1645, passed by the Florida Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Florida Public Service Commission must issue a report to the governor and legislative leaders by April 1, 2025, with findings and recommendations to support new nuclear in the state—specifically including military bases.
“Federal plans: The Biden administration launched an initiative in June to solicit advanced nuclear energy projects to be commissioned at military bases by 2030. The U.S. Army hopes to site two microreactors capable of providing 100 percent of critical load power.
“To meet the rising demand and to provide security and resiliency to military bases, “there is no better high-density [power] source that can keep the lights on a bad day, for a long time, under all circumstances,” said “Rian Bahran, assistant director for nuclear strategy and technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “The military is hoping to build microreactors that produce between 3 MW-10 MW of power, and it issued a request for proposals in June.
“Florida plans: The public utilities commission has scheduled a workshop on September 5, with input from the state’s Division of Emergency Management and Department of Environmental Protection, to begin its study of bringing new nuclear to Florida.”