Search Results for: Reduce reuse recycle

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Combine domestic coal with nuclear energy to make oil

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Power cheaper than coal – thorium AND uranium make it possible

ByRod Adams

…clear-produced hydrogen and oxygen to the coal synfuel process can greatly reduce CO2 production and, for modest CO2 credit, can further reduce the cost of the synfuel. Capturing CO2 from stack gas or even the air will further reduce the amount of CO2 that must be dealt with. This last case is independent of the price of fossil fuels and liquid fuel production costs and prices will have been capped. Of possibly even greater importance, the carbon…

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Exaggerated myths about nuclear accidents CAUSE negative health effects

ByRod Adams

…e answer to the issue is the same answer applied to any resource – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Note: reduce in this case does not mean an overall reduction, but a more efficient use for each unit of power output. Currently, our use of uranium and thorium resources is dismal. We only use about 0.5% of the potential energy in mined uranium and we throw away virtually ALL of the thorium that is extracted as a byproduct of rare earth mining. Rod Adams @Je…

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Limitations of unreliable energy sources (aka “renewables”)

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Nuclear energy makes a cameo appearance in Jeff Gibbs’s Planet of the Humans

ByRod Adams

…e industries. That path will end – whether we like it or not – with either reduced prosperity, reduced human population, or both. 2. We can reject the lessons we have been carefully taught by people with vested interests and develop a truly different kind of power source. Nuclear fission is here and available, but rich and powerful interests see it as a serious threat that must be fought, ignored or both. But fission opposition backers are billion…

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Russia continues sustained fast breeder reactor effort

ByRod Adams

…s to Congress as “spent” fuel burners that will (eventually) significantly reduce the amount of actual long-term civilian power waste. But its something that will require Congressional action 😮 GEH has similar proposal before Her Majesty’s Government, where it is under review. But Britain is a very different case: as part of the international non-proliferation program, they have taken upon themselves the task of reprocessing the world’s spent…

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Solar energy salesman claims nuclear costs twice as much as solar

ByRod Adams

…R & D has rarely, if ever, been focused on the kinds of improvements that reduce cost. In fact, nearly all of the investments have resulted in additional rules, regulations, and requirements that have increased cost, since the industry is regulated by an entity that demands near perfection, “no matter the cost”. Aside: The phrase in quotes in the previous sentence is from a talk that I heard NRC Chairman Macfarlane give this afternoon at the ANS…

Lightbridge metallic alloy fuel provides upgrade path for LWRs
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Lightbridge metallic alloy fuel provides upgrade path for LWRs

ByRod Adams

…fuel assembly. This configuration eliminates the need for spacer grids and reduces flow resistance while still meeting seismic and vibration resistance requirements. 5 x 5 Assembly laid flat. Center element is a control rod guide tube The reduced core flow resistance produces increased reactor coolant flow rate when coolant pumps run at their designed power and speed. With higher coolant flow and constant core differential temperature, more therma…

Union of Concerned Scientists Opposes ALL Proposed Used Fuel Recycling Efforts

ByRod Adams

…such plutonium. After some 30-40 years the inventory of plutonium would be reduced to around 300 kg and the annual production for a pure thorium fed machine would be around 20 kg (of Pu238 so not weapons usable). The second point that the volume isn’t significantly reduced – this is easy for any recycling system to achieve should it be valued. Simply fluorinate off the uranium. I’m guessing that bringing this up lowered his credibility before the…

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Arnie Gundersen going international

ByRod Adams

…of waste that your consumerism is responsible for every year that can’t be recycled and is too poisonous to dispose of? Mind you, this waste does not decay away like nuclear fuel waste. Ah, you didn’t think of that either, oh dear… Nuclear has the least environmental impact of any energy generation technology to date. It is comparable to both wind and hydro. Solar is still playing in the fossile fuels league. Nuclear kills less people per genera…

Hard to Believe Story About TMI Radiation and Health Effects

ByRod Adams

…Recycle everything. Buy used. Don’t buy from overseas. Use cloth bags and reuse. Eat locally. Reduce Meat consumption. Drive 55mph, if we all did, we would not need oil from the Middle East. Drive less. Walk, ride a bike to shop, work, play. Don’t fly. Take the train. We are down to 3 kwhr per day. The national average is 29kwhr/day. Where are you? Check your electric bill. Do a few of these things and check your next months bill. It really doesn…

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Buried pipes versus buried pipelines – hype versus hazard

ByRod Adams

…cantly radioactive, due to encrusted radium containing sludge. It can’t be reused or recycled, and must be buried as low-level waste. Wayne SW Probably the dam. One thing that got very little coverage in the media was the renewable energy disaster that occurred in Japan after the March earthquake. The Okura dam in Sendai collapsed and washed away an entire village of 1800 people. That is a death toll likely over a thousand for renewable energy, ze…

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