Centrifuge May Be Superseded by Laser Enrichment 346
An anonymous reader writes "Australian scientists have discovered, after a decade of tests, a new way to enrich uranium for use in power plants." From the article: "There are at present only two methods for sifting uranium atoms, or isotopes, to create the right mix. One, called diffusion, involves forcing uranium through filters. Being lighter, U-235 passes through more easily and is thus separated from its heavier counterpart. The second method, widely adopted in the 1970s, uses centrifuges to spin the heavier and lighter atoms apart. Both, said Dr Goldsworthy, are 'very crude. You have to repeat the process over and over,' consuming enormous amounts of electricity. The spinning method requires 'thousands and thousands of centrifuges'."
True cost of nuclear...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Objective answers - rather than pro-nukular or anti-nuclear spin - preferred (some hope!)
Re:True cost of nuclear...? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=260 [nei.org]
objective? (Score:2)
MOX Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
The first generation of nuclear reactors in the UK (Magnox) used natural (i.e. unenriched) uranium metal as fuel.
This meant that the fuel was very cheap to make but the fuel cans had to have a low neutron capture cross-section, hence the Magnox. This limited the temperatures at which the reactors could operate.
Moving to enriched uranium allowed the use of stainless steel cladding which keeps its integrity to much higher temperatures and is mechanically stronger.
There have been many developments in nuclear fuel technology since the 1950s, as one might expect. MOX was a good idea, but derailed by BNFL corporate incompetence and "environmentalist" hysteria.
The idea with MOX is that, instead of enriching uranium to increase the proportion of fissile U-235, you mix in fissile plutonium recovered from used nuclear fuel which is then "burnt up" in the new fuel to provide power. Plutonium isotopes are natural byproducts of the nuclear reactions in fission reactors.
Perhaps it would be more economical and environmentally-friendly to use more MOX than enriching fresh uranium?
Re:MOX Anyone? (Score:4, Informative)
As far as I'm aware, fissile plutonium doesn't always come out of the process - it needs to be a specific type of reactor, with enriched fuel, to "breed" plutonium...
That's not true. In conventional nuclear reactors, the plutonium naturally produced is fissile, or at least a substantial proportion of it is. This gives rise to the "moderator coefficient of reactivity" in thermal reactors where an increase in moderator temperature brings about a proportional increase in the number of neutrons with the correct energy spectrum to cause fission in the plutonium. This is a form of neutron resonance.
This is why Magnox and AGR reactors are "positive feedback" systems.
When a Magnox reactor is new, there is no plutonium, so there is no plutonium fission, so for the first few months of operation, the reactor is negative feedback.
In AGRs, the moderator temperature is kept constant by running the cold coolant gas through the moderator prior to cooling the fuel, so AGRs are negative feedback (and hence stable) as long as the moderator temperature is kept constant, which is achieved by active safety systems.
PWRs, on the other hand, are light-water moderated. They are effectively under-moderated and are epi-thermal reactors. They are negative-feedback since any increase in the moderator temperature (water) causes it to expand, reducing its density and hence the amount of moderation. As long as you can keep pressurised water flowing around a PWR it is stable.
In a previous life I worked in Reactor Physics at a nuclear power station.
Re:MOX Anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
That's as true today as it was a fortnight ago.
Re:True cost of nuclear...? (Score:2, Informative)
Just to nitpick, it's a kWh, not kW/h. That would make it a Joule/second/hour.
This is Not "nuclear power," this is AUS Nuclear (Score:3, Informative)
If you read up on the Gen-4 reactor designs, you'll find that greenhouse gasses, non-proliferation, safety, and more efficient designs (a LWR reactor is rather wasteful o
Re:This is Not "nuclear power," this is AUS Nuclea (Score:2)
And if they're second- or third-generation nuclear workers, they've got two or three belly buttons to compare to their uranium!
Re:True cost of nuclear...? (Score:2)
China or Russia? No, the primary source of high-quality uranium is much closer [nuclearfaq.ca].
Re:True cost of nuclear...? (Score:2)
Laser enrichment isn't new (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Laser enrichment isn't new (Score:2)
Re:Laser enrichment isn't new (Score:3, Funny)
Parent has excellent links. Silex web site. (Score:3, Interesting)
Quote from the first linked article: "In MLIS, an infrared laser is directed at uranium hexafluoride gas. The laser excites uranium 235 hexafluoride gas, while not disturbing the uranium 238 hexafluoride gas."
In 1972 or 1973, I built an apparatus to test whether a flowing gas carbon monoxide laser could excite uranium 235 hexafluoride. My little project was shut down without explanation.
The Silex web site [silex.com.au] gives almost no information. The "about Silex" [silex.com.au] web page missp
Re:Laser enrichment isn't new (Score:2)
Just the kind of news I DON'T want to hear.
Australia, how about we give you $100 billion to make sure this all disappears, OK?
Yes, I do know how much would hve to come from each taxpayer, but I'd gladly pay it to make the world a safer place.
A question? (Score:5, Funny)
Kisses,
Ahmadinejad
Re:A question? (Score:2)
Strangely, the article fails to mention that enriched uranium "can be used for nuclear weapons". It is almost as if the editors understood that reactor-grade uranium cannot be used for nuclear weapons, and therefore did not include this misleading phrase in the article.
Which begs the question as to why they do it in every single story on that other nation's enrichment experiments.
Short on details? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article goes on to explain that six other countries have tried laser-enrichment schemes and failed, but this effort has succeeded, and the only possible hint at why is that this new approach is that it is more "elegant and sophisticated".
Even a link to the press release [world-nuclear.org] would have provided a bit more information (though more legalistic than technical).
Oh goody (Score:3, Interesting)
Making Uranium enrichment easy is not necessary a good thing. Uranium ore isn't hard to get. Enriching it is the tough part. The same processes used to make fuel lead directly to gun-type "atom" bombs. It's just a matter of degree and some machining.
Get this process down to something small enough to quietly function in a barn and you could build a weapon inside the borders of your target. A gold mine or somesuch would be all you need for cover.
Re:Oh goody (Score:2)
Your idea is crazy, but is it crazy enough to be...oh shit.
Re:Oh goody (Score:2)
That's still a lot of power. Not something you'll do by plugging into a wall socket found in a barn.
Oh, and then there's the matter of the radiation. The Boy Scout who enriched his own nuclear fuel stopped when the geiger counter on his dashboard freaked out when getting within a couple of blocks of his house.
The enrichment process will still require a lot of heavy machinery, power, lasers, and shielding. Not something you can just "Throw up in a barn" somewhere.
Centrifuges (Score:3, Insightful)
Sigh.
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
I would be significantly more likely to trust the Israeli intelligence services than the American, particularly after the Iraq fiasco. I think it's generally accepted that Israel has one of if not the best intelligence services in the world.
(Before anybody says it, I'm aware that th
Re:Centrifuges (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
no it's not. (Score:2)
Which is why it became a pretty good anti-Republican response, superimposed on images of Katrina-damaged areas.
Republicans (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Power plants require uranium to be enriched to around the 4% mark, which takes fewer centrifuges and less time - as someone more qualified than I said when Iran announced its enrichment achievements, "Iran Now Capable of Making Glow in the Dark Watch Hands"
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Re:Centrifuges (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, the questions of efficiency, size of intended nuke, processing rate, how much people believe that Iran has 'only' 50 centrifuges(we've been wrong before!) have some importance as well.
Oh, and it's not just the Jews that are to wear 'ribbons
Re:Centrifuges (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Centrifuges (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm, you mean about Iraq? You do realise that we were "wrong" on purpose, and totally the other way - mobile biological labs turned out to be weather balloon inflating equipment, fertilizer factories were labelled as anthrax factories and the weapons located "around baghdad and tikrit, north, east, west and south somewhat" (to quote Von Rumsfeld).. didn't exist.
Plus, it would have been a lot easier to keep track of what equ
Re:Centrifuges (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean intelligence in general. Pretty much all intel groups make mistakes, and quite frequently. Maybe not as bad or willfully as Iraq, but it still occurs. It's like playing poker.
Plus, it would have been a lot easier to keep track of what equipment Iran was buying if Dick Cheney hadn't knowingly outed a covert CIA agent tasked with Iranian counterproliferation as political retribution against her husband.
True or false, I believe that it's more of a matter that even if it's dif
Re:Centrifuges (Score:3, Informative)
Deception and Agendas are aplenty, and we will not know whether or not you are right
for some time, but...consider Iran's step to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/49819 40.stm [bbc.co.uk]
If you want to send a message that you are totally above board you would NOT subvert
inspections by nearly 100% EU inspection teams, Iraq did this as well.
Playing shell games, delaying inspectors
Re:Centrifuges (Score:3, Informative)
> their coverup over intercepted phone calls in Iraq prior to
> the 2nd gulf war.
You might want to read the followup piece [slate.com] by the same author. Not to spoil the surprise, but the heading is "How Colin Powell Got So Much Wrong About Iraq".
Your evidence---all of it---is either old and discredited (like the above) or old and irrelevant (like the claim that presidential palaces were off-limits to inspectors, which was not true [cnn.com] about the pre-wa
Re:Centrifuges (Score:4, Informative)
Ya, it does sound familiar... [yahoo.com]
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
"Russian experts completed the initial plans in 2003 and construction began in early 2004. In late 2005, Bulgarian transport planes delivered tens of thousands of centrifuges from Belarus and Ukraine; they were transported directly to Neyshabour. In January 2006, 23 Ukrainian engineers arrived to start installing the equipment, joined in February by 46 Belarusian nuclear experts who are working in shifts to prepare the 155,000 P-1 and P-2 centrifuges for operation.
This compares with 60,000 in Nat
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Your quote makes zero sense - do you have any idea how much stabilised power you'd need to run 155,000 centrifuges for weeks? The IAEA (and the US) watches all ex-Soviet nuke equipment so closely you probably couldn't clean them without there being a note made in 15 different databases, but they managed to fly 155,000 centrifuges to Iran without anyone noticing?
Your point appears to be that anyone can pull anythi
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
I didn't quote anything about Iran moving anything without anyone noticing. Did you feel the need to just make that up?
Anyway as I mentioned in my previous post I do not completely believe this data and do not encourage anyone else to (I have been unable to verify the quantities listed).
So I gather you have no other point... outside of just be
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
"In late 2005, Bulgarian transport planes delivered tens of thousands of centrifuges from Belarus and Ukraine; they were transported directly to Neyshabour." - sounds like moving stuff to me
My point was that you are quick to quote what is obviously complete bullshit, and then say it makes you uneasy - even though, yes, you said it was unproven.
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
They're making Jews wear yellow ribbons!Quick, bomb them!
I am not certain if this form of discrimination warrants an air strike, but certainly, it would make this the country that practices it a sort of Pariah in the minds of the civilized world.
Re:Centrifuges (Score:3)
There's another country in the middle east that has that kind of discriminatory laws though [zmag.org]
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Jesus Howard Christ
Is that you, Doug? [jameswolcott.com]
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Re:Centrifuges (Score:2)
Did I write a long entry explaining the intracacies of fatwa? No, I just said that one was issued - I was demonstrating the nuances and opaqueness of any situation, not saying LOOK A FATWA HAHA STUPID AMERICANS IRAN IS GOOD REALLY.
Please don't invent my motives out of whole coth to suit your rebuttal.
This is hardly a new technology (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu [wikipedia.org]
So - nothing new here, move along, move along.
Women And Warheads (Score:5, Informative)
However, it's a LONG way from lab benchtop enrichment experiments to a functioning enrichment plant. And once you get to that functioning enrichment plant, there's the question of whether or not it was economically justifiable to build in the first place. This is where the American effort "failed" - even on paper, it never made sense to pursue this technology because it was just too expensive. Sure, you need thousands of high-precision centrifuges to run an enrichment cascade. This was still cheaper than building a laser enrichment plant.
The designs for a uranium laser enrichment plant ON AN INDUSTRIAL SCALE are not for the fainthearted. YOu've got to have the uranium in a gaseous state. That means heating it so hot that not only do you have a pool of molten uranium, but it's BOILING. The laser is going through the HOT uranium "steam". The only material that can stand up to these temperatures is pure graphite. The design becomes like a series of rain gutters on a house that carries "more enriched" and "less enriched" streams of molten uranium back for reboiling. Somehow you've got to figure out a way of putting optical ports into this hellhole to fire the laser beams in. The laser beams themselves are a weird wavelength (green) and takes some really expensive gear to generate at all, much less with intense enough power to penetrate deeply into a fog of molten uranium. Doing all of this cheaply? Good luck.
And in the background overshadowing enrichment plant economics was and is the fact that nuclear power plants are still just too expensive a way to generate electricity (primarily due to regulatory costs) compared to coal and natural gas turbine plants. The expected boom in nuclear power plant construction forcast in the 1970s and early 1980s never materialized, mainly due to Thre Mile Island and Chernobyl, and so the need for new-fangled enrichment technology as a support industry never materialized with it either.
Right now the cheapest way to come up with fuel for a nuclear power plant is not laser enrichment or even centrifuge enrichment. It's diluting old Russian warheads [usec.com], all 30,000 of them, down from 93% enriched uranium back to 3% uranium. This, along with all those Russian brides [russianbrides.com] American men now have access to, are the REAL spoils of winning the Cold War.
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:2)
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:2)
Yeah. Right there is where the difficulties with this method became most apparent to me. Any method that requires you to have a vaporised metal floating around is probably best left in the laboratory. Just look at all those Mad Hatters!
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:3, Informative)
There were Austrians in Australia working on enrichment? This is a very big deal politically here atm (in Australia that is you 'merican speed reader
Australia is a nuclear free country (except for the Lucas heights reactor in Sydney, we make isotopes for medical research only). We flirted with it in the 50's, but we have, until recently been a country who feels we can sell uranium (we have a lot btw - like a whole lot) overseas, pretty much raw, and use almost none of it fo
The Ninja Effect (Score:2)
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:2)
But the authors/editors of every single story on the Iranian enrichment program has felt it necessary and not misleading at all to employ the phrase, "enriched uranium, which can be used for nuclear weapons..." Don't you realize how important it is to keep this myt
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:2)
It's worse than that. He's (gasp) not funded by ad revenue.
We have to silence him immediatly, or he may pose a threat to our essential entertainment industry.
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Women And Warheads - extreme temperature (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_hexafluoride [wikipedia.org]
This substance is gaseous at 64C, no extreme temperature is needed. Laser enrichment works with this compound.
Re:Women And Warheads - extreme temperature (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? All the uranium centrifuge operations I'm familiar with use uranium hexafluoride gas. You dissolve the actual uranium in nitric acid, generating uranyl nitrate in solution. You extract the nitrate from the solvent, treat it with ammonia, reduce it to uranium dioxide with hydrogen, treat it again with hydrofluoric acid (UF4 now) and and oxidize it with fluorine gas to produce UF6, which is a gas at much, much lower temperatures and pressures than pure uranium.
Why on earth would you b
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:3)
For the laser separation method, not for centrifuges.
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:2)
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Women And Warheads (Score:2)
At least it will be easy to detect..... (Score:2)
Mass spectrometry (Score:4, Informative)
There is a third method that has been used on an industrial scale, which is to essentially build a huge mass spectrometer. Mass spectrometers are usually used to separate atoms into their isotopes for analysis but Ernest O. Lawrence [atomicarchive.com] proposed this for the Manhattan Project [atomicarchive.com] and the Y-12 separator at Oak Ridge, TN, built in 1941 [atomicarchive.com], yielded some useful results before being superseded by gaseous diffusion at the K-25 facility and later the S-50 thermal diffusion plant. Indeed the first 200 grams of fissile material delivered to Los Alamos came from the electromagnetic separator, more than a year before the diffusion separator started operation (the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima used about 64Kg)
Re:Mass spectrometry (Score:4, Informative)
Thermal diffusion was only pursued because the Navy had a boiler test and development facility that could provide the massive volume of steam needed as a heat source. It's small capacity limited it's role to providing enriched 'hex' to the Calutrons. (Using a more enriched feedstock moved them from hideously murderously inefficient to merely murderously inefficient.) Like the calutrons, the thermal diffusion plant was dismantled as soon as enough capacity from the gaseous diffusion (K-25) plant was available.
Richard Rhode's The making of the Atomic Bomb discusses the various enrichment methods available in WWII in great detail.
Sand + glass + electricity (Score:4, Interesting)
Process heat comes from the Sun, still the best fusion reactor going.
Electrolytic by-products are:
Now if the reaction can be combined with some hydrogen injection to make water and ease the total (electrical) energy required you get a nice sustainable technology. Water, also.
Solar cells are made from the silicon, formed into parabolic mirrors that focus the IR band to the smelting pot. Interference coating the cells is easy with the free nothing called a vacuum
Electricity from the power cells drives the electrolysis and runs the station power.
With all that silicon, I'm betting that some composition can make silicon into something more ductile.
Cheap building material would be nice...
Two methods? (Score:3, Informative)
> uranium atoms, or isotopes, to create the right mix.
AVLIS has been around since the 1970s, and there is also the South African cyclonic process. There are also hints in the public literature that there are other methods that were examined by the Manhatten Project and not pursued for various reasons.
sPh
Re: (Score:2)
Two Words (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't mean to be too alarmist, but this is VERY bad news. See, it's easy to get access to uranium ore. Many countries have the mineral, and buying yellowcake is not supposed to be all that hard. Heck, some of it supposedly went through Africa. If you have just a few kilograms of highly enriched uranium, again it is easy to make a bomb. Spherical explosives aren't needed, a simple crashing together of a critical mass is enough. 10-20 kilotons is still enough to cut the heart out of a major world city, and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
But getting from A->B WAS ludicriously expensive. I read that it takes a year for a sample to travel from one side of the centrifuge plant to another, and these plants have to be enormous, costing billions. The laser method as described appears to be much cheaper and generates probably close to 100% pure U-235. Yes, it is a secret technology, but the plans can be stolen or bought, and lasers and all the other stuff needed to make it work are not restricted exports.
It might still cost a billion dollars to make a nuke, but that's it - not 10 billion. Most private individuals without access to nation state resources can't do it, but even the poorest dictatorship in the world can probably scrape together or steal from the U.N. a billion.
Only *two* (Score:2)
Yet another answer to a non-problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now, nobody needs or wants any more U235, except for North Korea, Iran, and various splinter groups.
The US Govt has PILES of the stuff, as does the USSR. Plus many tons of Plutonium. All very expensive stuff, but worth less than zero.
There's more tons of U235 and Plutonium in all the unprocessed fuel elements that have outlived their usefulness in nuclear reactors. The stuff is so worthless it's being stored or buried, not put through a relatively cheap chemical reprocessing cycle to recover the U235 and Plutonium.
If we needed more U235, there are several multi-billion dollar separation plants in mothballs that one could restart with relatively little effort.
So this laser-enrichment, IF it can ever be gotten working on a large scale, is (a) a threat if rogue states and the Mafia get into it and (b) Will produce soemthing nobody needs, and (c) probably riskier and more expensive than just starting up the old plants.
Re:Yet another answer to a non-problem (Score:2)
Fun with lasers (Score:5, Informative)
If a photon of precisely the right frequency (and therefore energy) hits an atom, two things happen:
(1) It gets absorbed, and transfers its momentum to the atom -- i.e., gives it a little push.
(2) One electron in the atom absorbs the photon's energy, exciting it to a higher energy level.
Then, after a random time interval, two more things happen:
(3) The electron drops back down to its old energy level.
(4) The atom emits a photon, carrying the energy given up by the electron, and the photon's momentum delivers another push to the atom.
But while the first push was in the direction of the laser beam, the second one is in a random direction -- so the affected atoms, statistically speaking, wind up with a net gain of momentum in the direction of the laser beam.
So far, the laser is basically just stirring the gas. Now you tune the frequency of the laser a little bit lower. The "average" atom sees the photons at the wrong frequency, and the photons just truck on by. But atoms that happen to be moving toward the laser see the photons Doppler-shifted up to just the right frequency and they receive a push away from it -- so their average speed is reduced. Ba-bing, ba-boom, the gas is colder.
Laser cooling, along with a couple of other techniques, made it possible to get the super-low temperature needed to isolate the Bose-Einstein Condensate which got the 2001 Nobel.
rj
Re:Fun with lasers (Score:2)
Natural Uranium (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA states "..[p]ower stations are fuelled by a specific blend of two types of uranium. About 5 per cent must be uranium 235...".
This is of course untrue, for example the CANDU [wikipedia.org] reactor uses heavy water and natural uranium. Not processing uranium is cheaper than processing, laser or not.
IFR & CANDU (Score:3, Informative)
Fuel reprocessing however is necessary.
There is just no way we can supply our energy needs in the long haul other than with nuclear... that is unless we accept a massive change in our life styles!
Oil is peaking now. The actual month may well be in 2007 or even beyond that - but we are effectively already at peak because we cannot signficantly grow our supplies. We can increase our coal consumption and we can liquify it as well. We can also make bio-fuels. But they will not fill the gap created as conventional oil depleats. The short of biomass->ethanol for instance is that a tonne of any biomass (not the refined cooking oils!) is equivalent to about 2 barrels of oil. This is easy to illustrate by looking at the chemisty (CH2O)n -> C(n)H(2n+2).
We are starting to face a major energy crisis and this is only the beginning - barely the tip of the iceberg.
The issue is the current generation of reactors generate a pile of plutonium. While it isn't weapons grade Pu (too much Pu240 relative to the Pu239) it is still dangerous. The best course of action is to burn it up for power.
The CANDU is a near breader design and is quite efficient in its use of neutrons. It is a decent reactor to use until IFR can be put into production. Note that a CANDU can easily burn the spent uranium fuel which is incorrectly called "waste". An IFR can even burn depleated uranium.
Of course we need to allow fuel reprocessing for this to happen. The only reason we don't do it now is political. (for the short term... IFR combines the reprocessing on site and hense is far more secure).
As for the cost of nuclear energy?
The short answer is that enough governmental beauracracy can make _ANY_ industry unprofitable.
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:2)
No Kidding! From TFA:
Dr Goldsworthy said that, due to regulation, "we report to the Government regularly".Dr Goldsworthy is a regular reporter of the highest degree. OTH I wonder what Iran would pay for his services right now?
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:2)
*delete as appropriate
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:3, Informative)
I think the solution is to put butt-loads of funding into bringing fuel cell technology to the forefront.
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:5, Insightful)
I say we build so many nuke plants in 'trustworthy'(IE already nuclear) countries that we're buying all the fuel just to feed all the darn things.
Realistically, it's going to be impossible to prevent any country that wants nuclear weapons from getting them. I'm kinda suprised that we've done as well as we have, as all it takes is a country going 'screw you' and building the stuff themselves. We know it can be done with cutting edge 1940's level technology, and it's been over 60 years. Even countries like Iran have reached the point where they can do it with domestic industry if they truly wanted to.
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:2)
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hydrogen doesn't occur naturally in pure form - it's always combined with something else, like a hydrocarbon chain, or water. To run a fuel cell you either have to:
1) Use hydrocarbons as your fuel source. This is environmentally little different from using a standard internal combustion engine. You're still using natural gas, or possibly some other fossil fuel.
2) Use water electrolysis to get hydrogen. This requires loads of electricity. This in turn means that your
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:2)
Hear hear - India and Pakistan did it, North Korea did it (gulp), Japan could do it (or already has) if it weren't like, the world's biggest taboo there for obvious reasons, South Africa and Brazil came within a cunt hair of doing it (the former with Israeli backing), Israel did it by cheating - their enriched uranium was donated by a certain country, as were the designs, West Germany was on the
Re:hot potato. literally. (Score:2)
A good idea, except that building more nuclear power plants won't have a significant impact on our use of imported oil. Most of the oil the U.S. imports goes to gasoline. Power plants use coal and natural gas primarily, which are both widely available in the U.S. at low cost.
That's not to say that someday the availability of vast amounts of electric energy
Re:Is it just me? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a lot of radioactive material in brown coal. A power station is one of the best ways to distribute it in the atnosphere.
Re:Is it just me? (Score:2)
Possibly (Score:2)
Re:Possibly (Score:2)
People are inherently stupid. There's no point trying to educate them with the facts of nuclear power. They aren't interested. In fact, most are not capable of being interested. They care about celebrities, handbag music, Big Brother and winning the lottery.
Things are beginning to change now here in the UK at least as it is finally beginning to dawn on the stupid, ignorant and politicians (but I repeat myself) that they should have been building new nuclear power stations 10 years ago.
I was lucky. I knew
UK (Score:2)
Re:UK (Score:5, Funny)
Your bitterness is mighty. :)
Thanks. I've been cultivating it. :-) I intend to be the world's most curmudgeonly old git when the time comes, hopefully with an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for being an intolerant, cantankerous old fool with an "I told you so" attitude.
Re:Is it just me? (Score:2)
Second, there are safe, effective ways to deal with nuclear, and by that I mean actually radioactive material. The best is vitrification, i.e. turning it into a glass block, and storing it in a salt dome. Salt domes onl
Re:FP (Score:3, Funny)
No, I'm just joking, I really do love the Uranian people.
Re:Ssshhh... (Score:2)
BTW, they will manage to get the bomb. North Korea too, Afghanistan too, one day, every country will have its nuclear weapons. We can delay the Iranian bomb by 5-10 years maybe, but what then ? Isn't it time to have a political plan about the question ? Preferably before it becomes pos
Arms (Score:2)
Nukes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:uhm (Score:2)
Re:That's so typical (Score:2)
Location, location, location... (Score:5, Funny)
It's not helping that you guys are way down there at the "bottom" of the world, either. I think you should give some serious consideration to relocating a little closer to the population centers of the world; the shipping costs alone have to be just about killing you (besides, why would someone buy stale nucular fuel shipped from almost the South Pole when they can make their own fresh fuel right here at home?!)
In short, until you can overcome the transportation issues inherent in being about a zillion miles away from your customer base your best bet is to just export your ideas and let someone else implement them.
(in all seriousness: the "because they're very far away" answer is so far the ONLY way the wife and I have been able to convince our two three-year-olds we can't just pick up and go visit The Wiggles some weekend...though one of them actually just wants to go because on our globe Australia is pink.)