Fuel for the Future - Let's not waste nuclear waste.
Vložit
- čas přidán 4. 04. 2023
- WePlaneteers Joel Scott-Halkes and Mark Lynas explain why spent nuclear fuel is not nuclear waste but is in fact fuel for the future.
Read the What a Waste Report here: www.weplanet.ngo/whatawaste
Connect with WePlanet
Facebook: / weplanetinternational
Twitter/x: / weplanetint
Instagram: / weplanetinternational
LinkedIn: / weplanetinternational
Tiktok: / weplanetinternational
Threads: www.threads.net/@weplanetinte...
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/weplanetint....
About WePlanet:
WePlanet is an environmental organisation working with a network of citizen movements who are defending the crucial role of science and technology in ending the climate and biodiversity crises.
In the US we hug our nuclear waste casks. In the UK you lovingly caress them. I'm not sure what to think about this other than nuclear waste is awesome.
I so desperately wish those opposed to nuclear power did their research.
Sure, it's not renewable, but ~4% of that storage container had produced enough energy for 1.4 million UK homes for an ENTIRE YEAR.
That's just frankly a ridiculous amount of energy, and while it's not renewable, it's damn near close enough. I'd rather put my money into this than hydroelectric or wind.
But people are just too scared of large scale incidents. 2 have been big enough to make global news and be stuck in the world's memory so far, Chernobyl and Fukushima. They occurred 25 years apart, and with proper research and funding, i'm sure the frequency would drop significantly. 28 total recorded incidents at nuclear power plants have ever occurred, in the history of nuclear power generation.
We need to use more nuclear.
But one of the problems with accidents is that they have the potential to cause effects that last for thousands of years. So, if you have one of such accidents every 25 years, the number of inhabitable zones and damaged plants you have to manage will pile up. By the way which would be an acceptable rate for disasters? 5 every 10000 years?
Chernobyl incident was result of carless experiment by the NPP staff. Without the experiment, nothing would have happened.
@@Yu-sj1we 12 years after the Fukushima Daiichi incident, the surrounding areas are safe to be in.
In Chernobyl, it's a natural reserve and tourist destination. In most of the zone, if you don't eat dirt, you get less exposure than in a transatlantic flight. They don't need to rehab it, it is an invaluable source of income for dozens of people, and of scientific knowledge about the effects of radiation.
@@Yu-sj1we 12 years after the Fukushima Daiichi incident, the surrounding areas are safe to be in.
In Chernobyl, it's a natural reserve and tourist destination. In most of the zone, if you don't eat dirt, you get less exposure than in a transatlantic flight. They don't need to rehab it, it is an invaluable source of income for dozens of people, and of scientific knowledge about the effects of radiation.
Nuclear energy is renewable. The hundreds of trillions of tons of uranium and thorium in the Earth's crust will last longer than the sun will burn.
Deep geological waste repository: 😕
Cask storage with future reprocessing: 😀
1:05 Subtitle correction: 'dry cask', not 'dry cast'.
Important video.
Great demonstration.
If only people realised it isn't green goo like in The Simpsons
fast spectrum chloride salt, can do a waste burner or a DU/U238 breeder quite easily, fuel is everywhere if you avoid solid fuel.. alas everyone is trained in LWR/BRW/NaK solid fuel reactors most of the industry is adverse to innovation. I like MCSFR - Ed Pheil & Elysium Industries
You can use solid fuel in fast reactors (Na, Pb, NaK, Hg, etc), and just reprocess with PUREX or electrorefining.
It's a pain in the arse, but doable. This is much more mature technology than MCSFRs.
@@AlldaylongRock the PUREX process is molten salt process, why bother with the zirc cladding if you are going to use HF at high temperature in the end anyway? TRISO pellets are expensive and still not great fuel utilization. Yes a pebble bed would be possible to license today but I'm hopeful
@@AlldaylongRock a good reactor in my books has no zirconium or water anywhere near the core
@@samuelforsyth6374 Because the costs of an untested and unmaintainable, screamingly radioactive primary loop/tank complete with pump seals, pipe and electrical penetrations are astronomical. Such a system doesn't actually exist. Whereas we already have solid fuel sodium breeder reactors (and thorium thermal breeders).
@@gregorymalchuk272 a solid fuel breeder is not economical, either fuel cycle. EBR-II made that very clear
Nah, the wind turbine and solar panel makers are making way too much money for a reasonable cost effective alternative to come up. Sorry, gotta remind people about the fukushima disaster for another 30 years at least.
Nuclear in long term is more cost effective than solar and wind
Yes this "waste" is really fuel that can be used in fast neutron reactors or molten salt reactors. Really it's just a manner of building the reactors.
This presentation is disingenuous.
Reprocessing and re-use are not so simple. The separated fission products, containing most of the radioactivity will still require permanent disposal. Having been separated they are in a less stable form and will require multiple handling steps to condition and stabilise, prior to encapsulation. Deep, long term disposal is still required.
Of the remainder, most is non-fissile U238. There is a little plutonium, but not enough, so the mixture has to be topped up with excess weapons plutonium or enriched uranium. These are expensive feedstocks compared to ordinary Low Enriched uranium as per ordinary civilian reactors fuel.
This recycled fuel is MOX. You can use that once. Or, you *could*, if your reactor is licenced for it. EDF does not allow the UK to use MOX in their reactors.
Used MOX has it's own problems. The higher starting concentration of Plutonium means that there are more diverse fission products, and much more plutonium activation products.
These make both storage and disposal more lengthy and awkward, and make any attempt at further reprocessing decidedly awkward. Of particular note is U232 which separates with the uranium/plutonium fractions, and whose immediate daughters emit distinctly high energy Gamma radiation that complicates all further processing and fabrication. U232 has a half life of 70 years, this stuff remains awkward much longer than ordinary UOX Spent Fuel. Malcolm Joyce spends some space on this detail in his nuclear engineering textbook.
Besides MOX, there are no current demonstrated ways to use Spent Fuel. Proposed hypothetical fast reactors are unlikely to be able to accept even small quantities into their fuel mix. All proposals involve using enrichment at the upper limit of civilian licensing, just to get plausible operation. Adding Spent fuel components with larger cross sections and lower reactivity will simply make the reactor act as if substantially older and less reactive. Eliminating the most efficient and responsive fraction of the fuel load, and bringing forward the point where the fuel is inadequately reactive.
This stuff isn't going to be useful as fuel. This is just an excuse to delay much needed and long-overdue decisions and action for genuine final Geological Disposal.