Risky Recycling?
In “Rethinking Nuclear Fuel Recycling,” Frank N. von Hippel describes why he would like nuclear reprocessing to go away, but it won’t. Nuclear power is resurging, both globally and domestically. Continuing to discard as “waste” 99 percent of the energy in uranium ore is clearly unsustainable.
The technology is spreading inexorably, increasing its potential to be subverted for weapons production. To minimize that risk, fuel processing must be done under international auspices—with ironclad guarantees that nations will have uninterrupted access to fuel if they forgo their own enrichment and reprocessing facilities.
Von Hippel is correct that using MOX (plutonium oxide mixed with uranium oxide) to cycle plutonium back into today’s “thermal” reactors is expensive, is only marginally useful and produces plutonium of weapons-quality chemical purity. But recycling methods for advanced fast reactors are different. Such methods address resource utilization, waste and proliferation concerns (see our piece, “Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste,” in the December 2005 Scientific American).
Technology alone cannot remove the proliferation threat. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) is a useful step toward sensible management, and some 21 nations have signed on so far. But without continued U.S. leadership, the GNEP will fade away. Coordination will be lost, and the technology for producing nuclear weapons materials will spread uncontrolled.
--William H. Hannum, Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford
Argonne National Laboratory (retired)
VON HIPPEL REPLIES: Nuclear power could cut the growth of greenhouse emissions by up to 15 percent. Reprocessing makes nuclear power more expensive, however, and breaks down the barrier between it and nuclear weapons.
Hannum, Marsh, Stanford and I agree that reprocessing and recycling plutonium in water-cooled reactors make neither technical nor economic sense. A dozen countries have not renewed their reprocessing contracts with France, Russia and the U.K. Having lost virtually all its foreign customers, Areva, France’s reprocessing company, has not yet been able to agree on more than a one-year extension of its contract with France’s nuclear power utility. And the U.K. is giving up on reprocessing altogether.
Liquid-sodium-cooled, fast-neutron reactors utilizing recycling could fission plutonium almost completely but are so expensive that no private utility will pay for one. If costs change and proliferation concerns can be dealt with, the potential energy resource in the plutonium and uranium in spent fuel will still be there. In the meantime, we must dispose of hundreds of tons of already separated plutonium that is a legacy of the cold war and premature expectations of breeder reactors. For the foreseeable future, there will be no need to separate more.
Moving Line
“The Genesis of Planets,” by Douglas N. C. Lin, describes how, in the leading planet formation theory, planets form within a disk of gas rotating around a star. At a certain distance from the star is a “snow line” beyond which water stays frozen. I wonder about the stability of the snow line. It seems that it should move as the disk progresses. Could this be why Earth has an ocean?
--Tom Brown
Gainesville, Fla.
LIN REPLIES: The snow line does evolve. Because of intense irradiation by central stars and friction heating within the disk, our solar system’s snow line was initially located well outside the orbit of Jupiter. It gradually propagated inward as the mass flux through the disk declined and the gas dissipated. Eventually the relocation of the snow line was more or less stalled, although the ice-vapor demarcation face may have moved back and forth over about 1 to 2 AU. This essentially covered a substantial fraction of the region between Mars and Jupiter. The parent bodies of meteorites in the asteroid region formed over several million years. During that epoch, the snow line may have intruded on regions fairly close to Mars. Consequently, the water content in the meteorites gradually increased with the distance of their parent bodies from the sun. This evolution may have promoted the acquisition of Earth’s ocean.
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6 Comments
Add CommentGreen nuclear power is the only long-term solution to (1) ameliorate global warming, (2) dependence on foreign oil/gas, and (3) oil/gas depletion. Only two prime energy sources, coal and uranium, can affordably deliver terawatts of "mother" electricity for: (A) heavy industry, i.e. manufacture of autos, ships, airplanes, etc; (B) power for vast fleets of future electric plug-in autos; and (C) production of portable synfuels (hydrogen and ammonia) and biofuels to replace oil. However coal worsens global warming and must be preserved as raw material to make organics when oil is gone. This leaves uranium as the only "big-mama" green energy source, an "inconvenient truth". Green solar and wind energy are useful for small-quantity power generation in select locations. But at terawatt levels, immense areas of land and/or sea would be needed, necessitating enormous maintenance operations, spoiling scenic land- or sea-scapes, and destroying local ecosystems. As scientifically documented in "The Nuclear Imperative" (ISBN 1-4020-4930-7), uranium and thorium can affordably sustain global energy needs for some 2000 years, using proven fuel reprocessing and advanced reactor technology. For the USA, 500 additional nuclear reactors are required, built on 9000 acres (@ $1.5 trillion), compared to 1,500,000 windmills with storage batteries on 6,000,000 windy acres (@ $4.5 trillion). Ten times these numbers are needed world-wide. (Costs in 2005 dollars). Contrary to false propaganda by anti-nuclear groups, the cost of multi-giga-watts of electricity is three times less expensive with nuclear than for wind or solar. Solar and wind power generation requires expensive energy storage systems (batteries, etc) when there is no sunshine or wind. Also many miles of access roads for maintenance are needed to keep blades or solar panels clean from bird droppings, dead birds, sand erosion, and storm damage, and to periodically replace electrodes on storage batteries. Should the USA limit itself to solar and wind energy, it is guaranteed to become impoverished and dependent on synfuels imported from other countries (future OPECs), who have nuclear power when oil fields are depleted. GNEP is essential and moving in the right direction. Advanced fast reactors like the IFR developed at Argonne will be gradually phased in during the next few decades. Von Hippel exaggerates saying they are too expensive. A number of experimental fast reactors are already running successfully. Once fielded, costs are estimated to be about 10% higher than current thermal reactors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSheffrey, congratulations on making so many groundless and baseless assertions, omissions, and plain lies in such a short text.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a record.
PS give my regards to Alice while you're still in wonderland.
Cyrl, can you refute his assertions? What are his omissions? Where are his lies?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAccording to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there remains only 70 years of uranium ore on the planet at current rates of consumption. So nuclear energy is no solution to the forthcoming energy depletion crisis. Most experts agree that the only solution is energy efficiency coupled with renewables, unless nuclear fusion proves to be viable. The Environment is calling for an urgent war on waste.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEco-steve that's 70 years of uranium reserves at current prices. There's hundreds of millions of tons of the stuff accessible for a bit more effort in the continental USA alone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut the whole economics of calling perfectly useable fuel "waste" should be a source of shame to all involved.
Who is the expert on nuclear energy and what is the true cost of it? And if it is trully an enviromentally friendly energy, why is it polluting the area around Hanford in Washington State?
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