Search Results for: Reduce reuse recycle

Steven Chu is a Great Choice for Secretary of Energy

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Proud – but often frustrated – nuclear professional

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Potential for Korea, Japan, U.S. to Collaborate on Pyroprocessing Under Trump

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Fantasy Crossfire debate: Ed Lyman versus Rod Adams on fast breeder reactors

ByRod Adams

…term radiotoxicity and volume. Till and Chang were true believers in the “reduce, recycle and reuse” mantra that guides the thoughts and actions of true environmentalists. Lyman: Moreover, fast reactors have inherent instabilities that make them far more dangerous than light-water reactors under certain accident conditions, conditions that were studiously avoided in the 1986 dog-and-pony show at EBR-II. Adams: The entire design of the EBR-II was…

Fission can improve mental health by alleviating climate doomsday thinking
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Fission can improve mental health by alleviating climate doomsday thinking

ByRod Adams

…rom several thousand years to roughly 300 years. These improved cycles can reuse or recycle some of the fuel materials that have previously been categorized and stored as “waste.” That’s why it’s more common to hear nuclear professionals referring to nuclear waste as future fuel. Nuclear energy system designers are incorporating technological advances from fields outside of nuclear energy to make their systems more attractive. They are working to…

Groups fighting nuclear energy and advocating industrial wind and solar are not environmentalists!
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Groups fighting nuclear energy and advocating industrial wind and solar are not environmentalists!

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Advances in high temperature nuclear reactor fuel – TRISO integrity at 1800 C!

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Chinese plan to dominate nuclear market worldwide

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Existing nuclear plants are valuable and worth saving

ByRod Adams

…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

ByRod Adams

…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…

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Putting excitement back into nuclear technology development

ByRod Adams

…SFR for 1 year generating 1 GWe of electricity. The 5 tons of used fuel is recycled to remove 1 ton of fission products. 1 ton of depleted U is added to the remaining 4 tons of recycled fuel and returned to the reactor for another year. The 1 ton of fission products will return to background radiation levels in about 300 years. In summary over a period of 200 years, both the LWR and SFR fuel cycles will produce 200 GWe of electricity. the LWR will…

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Russia is a primary beneficiary of well-marketed, illogical effort to slow nuclear energy

ByRod Adams

…decades while producing emission-free power. Remember the mantra – reduce, reuse, recycle. For a true environmentalist, throwing useful resources away violates a fundamental philosophy. I have to get back to the main point. When operating nuclear plants are illogically forced to shut down as a result of an overreaction to a natural disaster that destroyed vulnerably located plants but did not cause any negative health effects, the natural gas indu…

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