…ors. We should aim for an overall nuclear energy system that enables us to reduce material and labor inputs, reuse valuable materials and knowledge, and recycle those materials whose use has changed their capabilities enough so that they need more substantial treatment. Compared to 1964, we have an important advantage. Unlike then, we have proven through full scale tests that we know how to protect the public in the case of accidents in both large…
Search Results for: Reduce reuse recycle
Talking Differently About Fuel Recycling
…tivation for reestablishing a closed fuel cycle in the United States is to reduce the volume and activity of the materials that need to eventually be stored in the Yucca Mountain. By implementing recycle, the load on the repository for each kilowatt hour of electricity produced with nuclear fission will be significantly reduced and may even allow a single repository to store the waste for hundreds of years worth of reactor plant operation. He desc…
Steven Chu is a Great Choice for Secretary of Energy
…fission power should be a bigger part of our energy future and he wants to recycle and reuse the fuel. Dr. Chu is also a signatory on a document dated August 2008 titled A Sustainable Energy Future: The Essential Role of Nuclear Energy. That document – signed by all ten national laboratory directors – describes the important role that is already being played by nuclear power and provides some indications on where those directors believe that the t…
Combine domestic coal with nuclear energy to make oil
…ized, all we need to do is change out the heat source from electricity and reuse our existing infrastructure as a general strategy. This is how I came to understand the need to reuse everything humanly possible down to the gas station on the corner and the cars in our driveways. I started studying economics, sustainability and resilience theory. There is a factor in macro economics called the endogenous growth factor. Economists when they don’t un…
Groups fighting nuclear energy and advocating industrial wind and solar are not environmentalists!
…are “too old” to be considered for the important environmental concepts of recycle, repair, restore and reuse. If you don’t follow this advice and decide not to do everything in your power to protect the natural environment for whatever reasons you might have, at least be honest and stop calling yourself an environmentalist. Actually, I suppose my real targets for this post are other writers. No matter what other people label themselves, you have…
Potential for Korea, Japan, U.S. to Collaborate on Pyroprocessing Under Trump
…ms to me that, if I understand the economics correctly, the more expensive recycled fuel wouldn’t make nuclear energy much more expensive – but just enough that if a competitor can use newly mined fuel instead of recycled, they would have an advantage over you, so that it essentially forces everyone to buy new fuel because it’s the cheapest option. But, if the higher cost of recycled fuel is required of everyone, then everyone will do it. Once you…
Advances in high temperature nuclear reactor fuel – TRISO integrity at 1800 C!
…with HEU, as it seems (I’m no nuclear engineer) that the combination could reduce the size of a reactor even more? I was also surprised to find how many research reactors are running fuel at 90% enrichment levels, as in our (Canada) Slowpoke units, and there does not seem to be a lot of security around these units. I do see though that there is a program to reduce use of civilian HEU, but is stricter control, and limiting enrichment levels just an…
Limitations of unreliable energy sources (aka “renewables”)
…inal cost of increasing conductor size or number of parallel conductors to reduce line loss should equal the revenue gained by the increase in available power sold. With solar & wind you are only transmitting a highly peaked power for an average of a few hours per day, so it is not economical to reduce line loss to a minimum by adding a lot of aluminum. Thus line losses are going to be considerable for long distance transmission. An absurd fantasy…
Proud – but often frustrated – nuclear professional
…euse as much “of the existing infrastructure as soon as possible.” Reduce, reuse, recycle right? well if we reduce our energy in our lives we reduce our standard of living, so that is not an option for me and a lot of other people. That leaves reuse and then recycle. What I am arguing for is not a new concept. Vacliv Smil does a pretty good job in “Energy Transitions” explaining the reason why shifts take so long. If we need to respond quickly the…
Chinese plan to dominate nuclear market worldwide
…ng myself to be distracted by the Next Big Thing. Since I like to “reduce, reuse and recycle” I will repeat my answer to his comment here. Light water SMRs are not game changers, they are game expanders. Adding them to the mix is like hiring an excellent running back for a team that has a quarterback like Payton Manning or Dan Marino. As the US demonstrated throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, building large numbers of small light water reacto…
Existing nuclear plants are valuable and worth saving
…ose plants old is ageism and contrary to sound environmental principles of reduce, reuse, repair, recycle. The well-supported actions to spread the message of nuclear energy’s value in our power system is coming just in the nick of time. I am pretty sure that the era of unsustainably cheap natural gas has ended and believe that the price increase shown during the past few months on the above Monthly Average Gas Prices for US Electric Generators gr…
Nuclear fission can help solve George Monbiot’s environmentalist dilemma
…dro or simple cycle natural gas plants. Displacing hydro does not directly reduce any fossil fuel consumption or emissions. Installing systems that lead to a greater need for simple cycle – and far less thermally efficient – gas turbines can significantly reduce any advantages from emissions reductions or fuel consumption. Renewable energy advocates do not like to discuss or quantify the financial and environmental costs of extending the grid to t…
