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From Nature magazine
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) this week granted a licence to allow construction of a plant that uses a controversial uranium enrichment process — one that critics fear could pose a serious nuclear-proliferation risk. The plant, which would be built through a partnership between General Electric (GE) and Hitachi in Wilmington, North Carolina, could be used to enrich uranium to make fuel for nuclear reactors quickly and cheaply using a process that involves a laser.
The laser process has long held the promise of cheaper uranium enrichment, but mastering it efficiently has so far proved elusive. Now, many think that GE Hitachi, which uses a proprietary enrichment technique known as separation of isotopes by laser excitation, or SILEX, may have finally found a way to make the method more efficient than processes involving gaseous diffusion or centrifuges (See Risky Business).
Although the exact details of the SILEX process are highly classified, it involves using a laser tuned to a specific frequency to siphon away the desired isotope uranium-235 from the gaseous form of uranium. This can then be used in nuclear fuels.
Proliferation worry
The concern is that building a fully operational plant could prompt other countries to follow suit, making it easier for them to develop bombs, even though the process is classified. The original application for the GE Hitachi plant in 2009 set off a protracted debate over whether the NRC, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, sufficiently weighs proliferation risks when licensing new types of enrichment technology (See 'Laser plant offers cheap way to make nuclear fuel'). That prompted the American Physical Society (APS) in College Park, Maryland, to file a formal petition with the NRC asking that such licences be subject to a formal review of proliferation risks.
Calling the new technology a “game changer”, the APS argued that a laser enrichment plant would, in theory, be smaller than one that uses gas centrifuges, and thus if the technology were to spread, it would be more difficult to spot would-be proliferators. The full petition will be sent to the NRC in November, and the commission will then vote on it — although it will be too late to affect the GE Hitachi licence.
Yet concerns over proliferation could be seen as premature, because having the licence in hand does not mean that the plant will actually be built. The NRC would have to hold a public meeting in Wilmington before construction could get under way, for instance. And David McIntyre, a spokesman for the NRC, notes that GE Hitachi is not expected to decide until the end of next year whether or not it will proceed with that step.
“We expect a commercialization decision to occur over the next several months,” the company said in a statement. “This will take into account many factors, including the need for enriched uranium in both the short and long term, cost and efficiency models of the technology on a commercial scale and other considerations.”
There is also still uncertainty about whether GE Hitachi really has the ability to make laser enrichment economical. “I think anybody who doesn’t have access to GE [Hitachi] proprietary information doesn’t have the answer,” says James Acton, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC.
Acton, a physicist by training, points out that GE Hitachi has so far only built a "test loop" to see whether laser enrichment can be made economical. “That’s all that’s known publicly, anything beyond that is pure speculation,” he adds.
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26 Comments
Add CommentIt's only OK when we do it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe one day when the nations who threaten each other with war and rumors of war are dead, we can actually make use of this to give everyone cheap electricity.
Don't hate being picky... I admit I often feel that way too...but why should we hate being right? And more importantly, why aren't the journalists who write these headlines more careful. When I first read the title, I really wondered how and why we would want lasers 'enriched' by uranium, and really wondered what an 'enriched' laser would even be....of course I did have to read the article to see what it all meant...and perhaps if it had been correctly worded it would not have drawn my attention so quickly.. do you think they do it deliberately?? :o)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust like I imagined it could, I can see a likelihood of it happening now. All that nuclear waste that we were worried about keeping isolated for 10,000 years or so being harvested for useful isotopes in just a few years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes - me too! Conspiracy theories are always tempting, but I suspect its a matter of inattentive incompetence rather than masterful manipulation...:o)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd we wonder why Iran claims to have a natural right to enrich uranium. We have no right to deny them the right to enrich uranium when we're going so far as to fund the invention of even better ways of enriching uranium ourselves...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can see this working well with Israel and their magic red line marker. Oh not a problem, this is off the funny looking white board. How on earth can the US demand curtailment of nuclear enhancement in Iran yet allow this and allow Israel to continue to not sign the NPT or join the IAEA. This is the most hypocritical move since Bush 43 discussed enhancing our nuclear arsenal with bunker busting nukes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen proliferation is totally out of control, remember this move.
Energy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRoughly every human on the planet has an output of 1100 watts 62hz. We as humans are the power for the future of this planet. ☺☻
We also have all the plants and trees that give off energy along with the magnetic field of the earth. so in essence we are a shining star with rainbow colors when seen through infrared.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgain I am dismayed by the narrow band of throughput of thought towards a more "stable" type of energy. The process of single sorce energy for the mass population is not sustainable or safe. As demonstrated by Big Oil, Coal, Nuclear accidents happen usually on massive scales,(IE. global warming?!!).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSay I make a solar system that disassembles water, seperates Hydrogen, Oxygen at my home with compressing and storage to follow. Say my neighbour and brother do the same across the planet. Say my vehicles are hydrogen powered. My brother and neighbour have the same system; I can charge my vehicle with. My house has power and is warm for the cost of such a system over a 25 year lifespan. End of Nuclear, Coal,Big Oil , global warming by human conditions of the planet.
Such systems are relitive low environmental damage and with the right fail-safes removes hazards of tampering /sabatage. Welcome to the hydrogen society ':-).
Again off the shelf technology and open licence technology.
We collectively can make the change removing ourselves from the grasps of an oliarchy of power producers/ suppliers
Not another Big Oil sycophant pushing their Hydrogen Economy SCAM:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHydrogen is a joke. About the worst choice in a fuel.
The conversion of:
water + green electricity --> H2 --> to H2 fuel tank --> Fool Cell --> Battery --> electric motor uses 4 times more energy than the much simpler & VASTLY CHEAPER:
green electricity --> battery --> electric motor.
See:
www.hydrogenhighway.ca.gov/sb76/workshop/brooks_nov2.pdf
The Hydrogen Economy – Energy and Economic Black Hole - by Alice Friedemann:
www.mindfully.org/Energy/2007/Hydrogen-Economic-Hole28mar07.htm
A couple quotes:
"..No matter how it's been made, hydrogen has no energy in it. It is the lowest energy dense fuel on earth (5). At room temperature and pressure, hydrogen takes up three thousand more times space than gasoline containing an equivalent amount of energy (3). To put energy into hydrogen, it must be compressed or liquefied. To compress hydrogen to 10,000 psi is a multi-stage process that will lose an additional 15% of the energy contained in the hydrogen.."
"...Canister trucks ($250,000 each) can carry enough fuel for 60 cars (3, 13). These trucks weight 40,000 kg but deliver only 400 kg of hydrogen. For a delivery distance of 150 miles, the delivery energy used is nearly 20% of the usable energy in the hydrogen delivered. At 300 miles 40%. The same size truck carrying gasoline delivers 10,000 gallons of fuel, enough to fill about 800 cars (3)..."
Oil companies invented the H2 economy concept. They know it is one of the best bait-and-switch scams ever. How do you think Big Oil got the California Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate revoked. They promised they only needed "a few years" to have H2 Fuel Cell vehicles on the road by the millions, by 2010. Were it not for the H2 economy scam there would be millions of electric vehicles on the road right now.
The only advantage to chemical fuels in a vehicle is increased range. Therefore logic dictates using concentrated liquid energy fuels, where electricity doesn't supply sufficient range. Methanol contains 40% more H2 than liquid hydrogen and is dirt cheap and environmentally friendly.
H2 is a terrible fuel and the fool cell offers absolutely nothing to a vehicle that can't be achieved far better with numerous ECONOMICAL & PRACTICAL methods. The H2 storage issue still remains a deal-breaker on its own.
Latest & greatest fuel cell available is the H-5000, buy one now - just the stack, is $22k and weighs 38 lbs for a lousy 5 kw:
www.fuelcellstore.com/en/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=1452&idcategory=155
Take a look at this and realize that carrying H2 around is not the only option. Also take a real look at what Germany is currently doing, they are laying down a H2 delivery system similar to our gasoline stations. Again, several steps ahead because they are thinking beyond the profit margin.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hydrogen-production-comes-natu&posted=1
If that doesn't make you think that we can't do it, then we really don't have much hope. It doesn't get any cheaper, easier, Just In Timeable as the above.
You're dreaming, H2 is the worst fuel ever to deliver, send on pipelines or to produce as a fuel. Just what on Earth do you expect to gain from Hydrogen? Come on, name it. Virtually no advantage to it whatsoever. Interesting that the sleazy, scam artists in Germany are once again jumping on Big Oil's bait-and-switch Hydrogen SCAM. I recall back at the 1st potential explosion of BEV's, Germany was refusing to build battery electric vehicles but was touting Big Oil's H2 scam, actually - believe it or not - touring the world with a liquid hydrogen fueled vehicle. Incredible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd this is the same Germany that embraced the idiot Hitler, and Wind & Solar energy even though Germany is one of the worst locations in the World for both, and in spite of their technical expertise, abandoned RATIONAL, SUSTAINABLE, PRACTICAL Nuclear Energy for nutty Renewable Energy SCAMs which have failed so miserably that Germany is building 23 new strip-mined Lignite Giant Dirt Burners to supply its real energy needs. Of course the real story is evident from the German Chancellor who committed Germany on the whacky scam of abandoning Nuclear in favor of Renewables, promptly joined the board of directors of the Russian Natural Gas Giant Gazprom at a 7 figure salary. And everyone knows Wind & Solar = Natural Gas.
"..., then we really don't have much hope. It doesn't get any cheaper..."
Are you kidding me? You can produce Methanol from Coal for 11 cents per liter, as China is doing, or 13 cents per liter in a DOE demo plant. Methanol has 40% more Hydrogen than liquid hydrogen. You can make Methanol carbon neutral from the vast quantity of excess, forest fire starting wood, diseased wood, waste wood, agro-waste, municipal waste, industrial waste CO2, Flue gas, Volcanic CO2 and even atmospheric CO2. Methanol production is so simple you can do it in a transport trailer sized factory moved close to the biomass fuel source. And unlike ethanol, methanol uses 100% of the biomass carbon not 20%. The Nobel prize winning chemist and World's #1 expert on fuels, George Olah, concluded that Methanol must be the liquid fuel foundation for a new Zero Carbon, Nuclear economy and that Hydrogen WILL NOT WORK.
Read George Olah's book "The Methanol Economy", which Big Oil & Big Agro wants to have banned from publication. And then come back to me when you understand a bit about fuels.
David Russell : where in the link you posted does it say that Germany is laying down a pipeline network for H2? The linked article is just another gee-whiz announcement which the energy cargo-cultists love, suggesting that the solution to all our problems is just over the horizon. It always is. That article is now 2 years old, and have you heard anything more about it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClutching at straws is nicer than facing up to hard realities, but it must be said, SciAm, to its shame, is bad at that.
But they have a specified target. They are going to use their Uranium to blast Israel off the planet, as stated by their president. We can not allow this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut they have a specified target. They are going to use their Uranium to blast Israel off the planet, as stated by their president. We can not allow this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDwbd please if you could focus on what was typed out in original post. The method of hydrogen production IS using Solar Technology combined with the separation of H2O. The conversion of solar energy to hydrogen power is achieved easily now within current technology and with the newest research and development will be more efficient. You must focus on the fact that each individual home/ property is a source. Delivery of such energy is an academic forward to production and use for home and car fuels. Maybe the power requirements for large company structures might be a challenging effort but as a partial solution is is far more benign than nuclear. As stated in reports previously the sun delivers all the energy required across the planet to power any and all energy requirements humans may need now and in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is clear is that the single source energy producers the human populations are dependently conditioned to accept are at risk and need to modify the business model they now assume will continue indefinitely.
It is up to all of us to see Solar Technology harvesting effectively reducing our detrimental legacy which Oil, Coal, Nuclear leaves in it's use. The use of Water => Hydrogen is not toxic like as you state methanol being the best. I say get yourself in a methanol rich environment then try a hydrogen rich environment; which can hurt you more?
You're "system" is so outrageously expensive that it would collapse our economic system long before it even made a serious dent in energy consumption. Work the numbers, and quit waving your hands vigorously in the air. Show us costs, show us storage, show us application. You won't because you can't. Keep in mind that the per capita energy consumption in the USA is an avg of 11,000 watts continuously, in Canada it is 15,000 watts. You ain't gonna even come remotely close to supplying that energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd Hydrogen is a deadly explosive gas, the Fukushima explosions were all caused by H2 building up in the 4 buildings and managed to explode EVEN THOUGH there was no power or ignition sources. A lightning strike a mile away can ignite H2 which is explosive anywhere from 4% to 74% concentration in air. Methanol is not toxic, in fact less toxic than ethanol, it is a human & primate poison - but only if you drink it - so don't drink it, duh!
I must laugh a little here when you say the system I speak of would collapse the economy. What is currently happening to the USA economy now; is it not in a state of collapse all the while being propped up by the govt? Funny the hydrogen economy hasn't even been introduced yet! Remember WWII? What happened in Detroit when the USA entered the war.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the numbers a modest solar system, ( while being subjected to lobbyist influence), can cost ten thousand or so. A hydrolysis system can be in the neighborhood of something like five thousand which would be mid to high tech. A standard combustion engine, (any scrap yard), one thousand, a generator another five thousand. A separating and compression unit for oxygen and hydrogen liberal estimates ten to twenty thousand. Storage units for Hydrogen and Oxygen five to seven thousand. The cost to put it all together ten thousand more roughly. A rough guess fifty thousand.
Now lets look at yearly costs of your power consumption and heating and cooling your house. Three thousand or more for heat (in Canada) and another three thousand or so for energy to light your world, power your toys. Roughly six thousand a year for house and home. Oh now you have fuel for your car to run into town!
Hmm math.
So before you go Poo Poo on Hydrogen look at the research in materials science currently out you may be surprised. As I know methanol I wouldn't be around a spill the vapor contact alone has health consequence and tends to pool in low lying areas. Hydrogen tends to float up and dissipate. Time for you to have a serious look at the roll Oil, Coal, Nuclear play and who those that are playing. I would suggest you read "The Prize" and get back to me on that. As I say the time is neigh; better energy mods are out there now. Ya gotta love evolution huh.
To be honest you need not go so far with the hydrogen storage. Browns gas works great by itself just the down time at night presents a problem when generating source fuels. Hence why a modest,(enough for a week perhaps?),Hydrogen storage system is required
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the US is near bankrupcy, largely due to expensive Oil imports and Oil Wars. And you want to increase the price of energy ten-fold or more - yeah, that would help a lot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLatest NREL avg price in USA for Solar PV is $7/watt installed. At an avg capacity factor of 13% new, for a good location, no shade trees or buildings and cleaned regularly. Even under those ideal conditions that works out to $55k per kw avg output. Now you want to feed a Hydrogen Electrolysis unit with that @ 65% efficiency, compress it, store it and burn it in a crappy generator at best 20% efficient, so now you're at $55k/.65/.20 = $423k per kwavg output, not counting compression & leakage losses.
So avg US household uses 1.3kwavg so that will be $550,000 up front cost, plus the cost of the electrolysis unit, compressor, and giant extreme pressure H2 storage tanks, which must be licensed and inspected annually. Man I wouldn't want to be in your neighbourhood when one of those babies blows - would bring a new meaning to the phrase "there goes the neighbourhood".
And that's just household electricty, no heating if you live in the North, avg 2 kw for that. So triple those costs to include heating, for northerners. And avg transportation another 2 kw so now we are at $550k X (2+2+1.3)/1.3 = $2.2M to supply an avg northern homes heat, electricity and transportation energy (for a single car family). Although sensibly you would want to burn the Hydrogen directly to supply home heating, a bonus reduction in cost.
And that is only avg 5.3kw for the household. For a family of four X per capita total energy consumption in Canada is 15 kw, so 60kw for a family of four. 60-5.3= 55kw. So 55/5.3 X $2.2M = $23 million per family of four to pay for their household energy, transportation and their share of Government, Industry, Military, Public energy consumption. I assume you still want industry, jobs, police, military, schools, highways and all kinds of other infrastructure. So your plan: $23 million per family of four every 20 yrs or so just to supply our energy needs. Except that doesn't count the embodied energy in imported goods which is substantially higher than the embodied energy in exported goods.
And I will leave it as an exercise for you to calculate the size & price of a 5,000 psi H2 storage tank to hold enough H2 generated during the summer to supply 20,000 kwh of winter heating load. We won't bother counting the shortfall in winter home electricity needs.
So I would say that your system "..will collapse the economy.." is serious UNDERSTATEMENT!
Wow, get some anger management. While you were creating enough steam to power this whole country did you read the post. It is a cynobacteria that eats chlorophyll (like the green stuff we leave hanging around after harvesting) is sustainable (had been an issue in the past) puts out about 3,000 times more gas than originally. It poops O2 and H2 on demand, just in time, when you want it, what ever it takes for you to see that it takes the storage issue away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the Germans are so stupid, then why are they the only economy in Europe that is holding the continent together right now?
Again read the article and learn. Being preachy and steamy should be used to run something other than your mouth.
To be honest you need not go so far with the hydrogen storage. Browns gas works great by itself just the down time at night presents a problem when generating source fuels. Hence why a modest,(enough for a week perhaps?),Hydrogen storage system is required
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo basically in a nutshell the tech is out there to remove ourselves from the blatant risks Oil coal and Nuclear pose,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheers mate :)
Well, I was replying to the age-old claim of "Green" Electricity, in this case Solar PV, to Hydrogen by electrolysis of water, to storage to ICE generator that the man was referring to in his comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm well aware of various hyped up proposals of direct Solar to Hydrogen or Bacteria to Hydrogen, but they haven't made it past lab experiments. And those are not even close to viable. Show me a commercial unit, costs & specs. And then I will work the numbers for you and show you what a joke those SCAMs are. Possible, maybe, someday, somewhere niche applications but Energy Solutions - afraid not.
Most efficient use of Biomass is Biomass to Methanol. That is because Biomass is horrible at capturing Solar Energy, only 0.1 to 1% efficient, vs Solar Panels for example at 8-16% efficient. What Biomass does good is capture atmospheric Carbon. So you want to use 100% of that Carbon to transfer to concentrated liquid fuel carbon, not throw it all away like you want to do, and the cheapest simplest way is with Methanol production. Fermentation, like Corn or Sugarcane Ethanol throws away stupidly fails to utilize 80% of the Biomass carbon.
And it would take over 3X the total utilized arable land in North America just to supply the United States Energy consumption, IF you optimized it to entirely the most productive energy crop, switchgrass. And that ignores processing & delivery of that vast, heavy and bulky load of biomass - an enormous difficulty to store, transport and process. Add to that you are raping the soil of nutrients, taking everything out of the soil, replenishing nothing, that won't last.
And furthermore we kind-of need all that land & water for like FOOD PRODUCTION!
So best use of WASTE Biomass is direct conversion to Methanol, you can't beat that and you won't beat that. Only problem is Big Oil and their Big Agro partners know very well that Methanol can kick their collective butts, so they have instituted a total ban on Methanol fuel use or Methanol press - in their mainstream media or mags like here in SCIAM.
And the German "Green Energy" misadventure has been a dismal failure. Heavily subsidized jobs, around $150,000 cost for each job created, and those jobs have been evaporating, like spring frost in the sunshine, as the Solar manufacturing is going bankrupt in Germany, they sold 138 MEuros to China of Solar product while importing 5900 MEuros of Solar Tech from China. Yep, lot's of jobs created by German Solar - CHINESE JOBS!
Germany's economy survives by high tech exports like centrifuges to Iran.
Brown's gas?!? A ridiculous scam that has been blown apart many times, use some common sense. No reputable scientist believes in that trash:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.alternative-energy-resources.net/browns-gas-the-reality.html
www.nature.com/news/2007/070910/full/news070910-13.html
Big Oil loves SCAMs like Brown's Gas, Hydrogen Economy, Corn Ethanol, Wind & Solar Energy, the E-Cat gives the gullible public something to believe in and waste $trillions on without making even so much as a dent in the usual burn-baby-burn - Oil, Gas & Coal.
no your just being picky, the title makes the subject of this article quite obvious.
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