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World Nuclear University Launched
Posted by
simoniker
on Mon Sep 08, 2003 03:53 PM
from the stop-worrying-and-love-the-institution dept.
from the stop-worrying-and-love-the-institution dept.
nuke-alwin writes "The first meeting of the 'academic council' of the newly-launched World Nuclear University (WNU) was held in the UK last week. The mission of the WNU is to strengthen the international community of people and institutions to guide and further develop nuclear power and many other nuclear applications (in agriculture, medicine, environmental protection). As workers in the nuclear industry are aging, organisations have started Young Generation Networks such as the YGN of the British Nuclear Energy Society. The WNU is a further recognition that the nuclear industry needs to educate a new generation of workers, so that nuclear power can continue to provide electricity without the production of greenhouse gases."
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Nuclear Power is the future (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:5, Interesting)
What's wrong with abandoned salt mines? It may not be perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than steels drums sitting around. Or what about encasing the waste in ceramic nodules and dumping them into the Marianas trench? Digging mile long shafts into geologically stable granite mountains?
Europe's using a heck of a lot of nuclear power. Probably ten times what the US is using. What do they do with it?
Parent
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody who has actually looked at how bad coal plants are for the environment and human health must realize what a joke the "dangers" of nuclear power are.
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:3, Informative)
Europe's using a heck of a lot of nuclear power. Probably ten times what the US is using. What do they do with it?
We use it again [bbc.co.uk].
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:5, Informative)
It's very simple. You reprocess the fuel to recover the usefull stuff out of it. Some of the U235 wasn't used up, so you can save that. Some of the U238 absorbed neutrons and turned into Pu239 and Pu240, which can also be used. Plus there's a smattering of other useful heavy isotopes, some of which (potentially of the Platinum group) would be useful to isolate and sell.
The problem is that you are creating Plutonium, which is bad on the grounds of nuclear proliferation. Although, the Plutonium produced isn't actually too useful for nuclear warheads anyways because the Pu240 contaminates the warhead-friendly Pu239.
The remaining stuff is generally not suitable for reactor usage but is occasionally reactive. It looks like you might be able to make it either a net-gain or, at least, not a substantial waste of energy, to bombard it with neutrons so that it will decay much faster.
The fun thing is that, once the nasty stuff that's very radioactive has had a chance to decay, you are talking about stuff that is actually less radioactive than the source rock. Even without reprocessing, you are talking about storing the stuff for maybe a thousand years.
The problem is that it's a bad word because we're trying to get all of the little countries of the world to *not* have nukes, and one of the good ways to do this is to build some reactors, put in rods of U238, and then isolate out some Pu239 before the Pu239 has a chance to absorb another neutron and become Pu240. Somebody got the bright idea that if nobody had access to a reprocessing plant that they'd never be able to get enough Plutonium to make a bomb. It's really kinda dumb and just makes us further beholden to the oil and coal reserves.
The problem is that there's so many whackos of every variety (including overzealous environmentalists) who oppose nuclear power, every single move, even it's a really good idea, is heavily argued about.
Parent
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:3, Insightful)
You're hardly "at the mercy of nature" with solar and tidal power. The movements of Sun, earth and moon tend to be somewhat predictable. Even windpower is fairly consistent over longer periods of time.
Furthermore I'd hesitate to call nuclear energy 'clean'. It maybe so at the actual power station site, but the production of the fuel rods (digging up and enriching uranium) and the actual power station both require a lot of clean-up.
Finnally being confident that a solution will be found seems a rather dan
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the biggest problem with these technologies is that they take up very large areas. This is fundamental limitation; if we want to get large amounts of energy from solar cells and wind power we have to give up large areas for these purposes.
As a friend of the environment, I would much rather use such areas for wildlife/ national parks and take the energy from nuclear plants.
It is too bad the environmental movement is so dogmatic; they get these ideas that certain things are Bad, and at that point no science or rational comparisons can make them change their mind. It does not matter if that there has been tremendous development of nuclear technology in terms of efficiency/ security/ waste.
It seems like GM is facing the same issues. Instead of discussing intresting tradeoffs suchs as herbicedes/ GM/ larger areas for cultivation the enviroment lobby is completely fanatic.
It too bad, because the issues they argue about are really important.
Tor
Parent
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:4, Insightful)
>I think the biggest problem with these technologies is that they take up very large areas.
There are a variety of problems associated with so-called "clean" energy sources. Unpredictability and size are certainly two. Another problem is that they often aren't environmentally friendly. Most people are aware of the damage caused by hydro-electric dams, but similar effects come from all natural sources. Tidal power obviously affects currents and erosion. Even solar and wind power on large scale will affect weather patterns and climate in addition to the effects of their sheer size.
Basically, you can't just extract energy from the environment (technically, move it, since it isn't being destroyed) without affecting the natural sinks for that energy. True, fossil fuels and nuclear add to the net energy (since they were stored in the ground), so perhaps they are worse in that sense. There's really no solution that doesn't cause some harm.
Parent
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Yes, you are at the mercy of nature. Let's get some facts straight for the mis-information givers. To begin with, the two largest problems facing solar power is that for one, the farther you are away from the equator, the less solar power you can produce. Most of the US in not on the Equator. Secondly, solar power production is directly related cloud cover, among other factors. Building a solar powered facility in Wisconsin, where I live, never pays off. At night, you need energy storage, and that is a whole other issue. Some states it may work, but 90% of the rest of the US...it doesn't.
2) Now, wind power does not take up large amounts of space. What you don't understand is that the actual footprint of a wind turbine is only around 100-150 square feet. A wind turbine is generally 50-100 meters tall. The taller the wind turbine, the more power it can produce (on flat land like Iowa, Nebraska, etc.) Wind turbines are always built based on worse case scenario wind shear conditions at a design height. Wind turbines do not speed up or slow down, since the generator has a naturally occuring electrical braking action (think Eddy Current braking) and is built to worse case scenario wind shear conditions for minimum operation. The real problem, at least in Iowa where I have done utility studies for the IDNR (Iowa Department of Natural Resources) is that a lot of birds get killed flying to into these huge wind turbine farms and animal activities/tree huggers try to get them shut down. Apparently, the tree huggers want their cake and eat it too. Idiots.
For a great example of wind power helping out on a massive scale is look at Denmark. They are currently working on converting 90% of their entire COUNTRY to using solely wind power. How are they doing this? Simple. They are building large wind farms far out into the ocean and using constant ocean winds to power the wind turbines. Is it working? YES. Here is an internet link to check this out for yourselves
http://www.windpower.org/en/core.htm
Now, the idea has been presented in the United States by several MAJOR utility companies in recent years. The response they have gotten? "We don't want hundreds of wind turbines blocking our view of the ocean."
You want renewable energy? You change the piss poor, "I only care about me and my pretty ocean view and my pretty birdies, but SAVE THE EARTH and give me FREE CLEAN POWER" Of course, only the US seems to care about points #1 and #2.
PS-According to a multi-year study in Denmark on their ocean wind turbine farm and birds? Guess what, after a couple of years, the birds learned to fly around the wind turbine farm. Gee, figure that.
Parent
Nuclear power's time has passed (Score:3, Insightful)
What about the decline in fossil fuels and gree
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:4, Insightful)
Folks, pay no attention to the radioactive waste. Nothing to see here.
We repeat: Pay no attention to the radioactive waste. Move along...
Folks...errr...we might need to slightly modify our previous "emission-free, clean" statements. The statements are still true, but for a slightly smaller value of "true" than we'd used originally.
All right folks, we'll level with you. There are a few by-products that are created by our nuclear power plants, and they're what you might describe as "incredibly hazardous". But remember, a watermelon can also be very hazardous if you try to swallow it whole. Just want to keep things in perspective here.
However, the good news is that these clean, non-emissive, watermelon-like by-products will be around for thousands of years, so there's ample time to study them, and we're sure that technology will someday be able to deal with them. Until that time arrives, we'll just be...ummm...well, kind of shoving it in a hole in the ground.
Here, look at the monkey. Look at the silly monkey!
Parent
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:2, Funny)
See, that's how it works on
Re:Nuclear Power is the future (Score:3, Informative)
Your name's FUD. Elmer FUD. (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some long-lived isotopes in the mix, but we're fairly good at separating isotopes from each other. There is no reason we couldn't filter those out (e.g. Tc-99 [epa.gov]) and package them for multi-million-year disposal. The beauty is that the hot isotopes are short-lived, and the long-lived isotopes aren't hot.
100% safe... to sit next to. You know, like blocks of lead and sealed vials of mercury? Just don't take any internally.It might interest you to know that good old stable arsenic is a serious problem in parts of Asia. Turns out that the wonderful high-tech (not) invention of tube wells for drinking water allowed the over-pumping of aquifers, which let air into them. The air oxidized the formerly-stable arsenic, which became soluble in the water and came up via the wells. Now people across large parts of India have chronic arsenic poisoning. I can't think of any problem with Yucca Mountain affecting so many people or so large an area.
Yeah, someone is bound to lay claim to the world's oceans and all their dissolved uranium, and all the world's thorium while they're at it. And every bit of granite on the planet, and all the coal ash (the uranium in granite gives it more potential energy than coal, and the U and Th in coal ash has more energy potential than the carbon in the coal). I've got nothing against renewables, just badly-thought-out renewables. So what are you doing to support Bryan Roberts and his gyromill generators?Parent
Dear Sirs, (Score:5, Funny)
What you won't read in the article... (Score:5, Funny)
interesting choice of words in headline. (Score:5, Funny)
Just what the world needs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just what the world needs (Score:2)
Of course not. Radium kegger at my house, pass it on, dude!
Great... (Score:2, Funny)
Job Availability? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uranium in the atmosphere (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory Simpsons reference (Score:5, Funny)
Homer: Uh, excuse me, Professor Brainiac, but I worked in a nuclear power plant for ten years, and, uh, I think I know how a proton accelerator works.
Prof: Well, please, come down and show us.
Homer: All right, I will.
Everyone abandons the glowing green building. Homer walks out, glowing green himself.
Homer: [to meltdown men] In there, guys.
Men: Thanks, Homer.
-- Homer Goes to College [snpp.com]
Auction (Score:5, Funny)
Visit my Ebay listings for lead jock straps, helmets and surplus radioactive materials.
It is a double edged sword (Score:5, Funny)
I am extremely concerned about this nuclear school and what it means for our national securitization. We must not misunderestimatify the potential for doing both good and evil that this nuclear school provides. We must keep tabs on it to make sure that the nuclear knowledge does not fall into the wrong hands and remains in the control of Americans for the good of America.
Thank you and God bless America.
When is the US going to grow up? (Score:5, Informative)
We have enough power generation capacity sitting in nuclear waste cooldown pools to run all of our nuclear power plants for several decades... we just have to refine it.
Re:When is the US going to grow up? (Score:2)
Re:When is the US going to grow up? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
always astounding (Score:2, Interesting)
Yay! It's environmentally friendly! None of those nasty greenhouse gases, no sir! Just waste that is very chemically toxic, emits powerful high-energy radiation, and has a half-life measured in millenia. And as an added bonus, it costs billions and billions of dollars!
Re:always astounding (Score:4, Informative)
You know, this is probably the most misunderstood aspect of nuclear reactors. Everybody is convinced that nuclear waste is so dangerous and that it is the worst thing that can happen to the environment because the radioactive nuclei won't stabilize for thousands of years.
The thing is, nuclear waste is composed of fission products, which are a lot of different things. There are short-lived isotopes, medium-lived isotopes, and long-lived isotopes. The long-lived isotopes that everybody likes to make a big deal about are only a percentage of the total waste (I don't remember the actual number, but I think it is something like 20%). Furthermore, you can observe an interesting trend if you look at a chart of the nuclides. The high-energy betas and gammas tend to come from short-lived and medium-lived isotopes. Long-lived isotopes tend to emit weak betas and alphas.
So what does this mean? It means nuclear waste becomes a lot "safer" after several decades (long enough for the short and medium-lived isotopes to stabilize). Then the longer-lived isotopes that remain suddenly become a lot easier to dispose of. Better yet, if those long-lived isotopes happen to be fissile, they can be recycled into new fuel and then they don't have to be disposed of period. Also, if you could separate the short, medium, and long-lived isotopes initially, the short-lived could be kept in a facility until they stabilize, the long-lived could be recycled, and then the only waste that you actually have to worry about disposing of are the medium-lived isotopes.
Personally, I don't think nuclear power is the perfect solution to every solution, but it is a good solution to many problems. If people would get over the stigma on radiation (leftover from the cold war) and come up with a good way to deal with nuclear waste, nuclear power would be a much better solution than the many gas and oil burning power plants we currently have in the US. And that's not to say that power-generating is the only good function for a nuclear reactor. A lot of really good science can be done with them that can't be done with anything else.
Parent
What is being produced? (Score:2)
Instead of greenhouse gases nuclear power produces radioactive wastet that will be dangerous for tens of thousands of years.
atoms for peace (Score:3, Interesting)
And funny it was held in the uk, where the nuclear program has finally been scrapped as the government has admitted that it is bankrupt with huge liabilities. Not technically scrapped as they will run a few plants for a bit, but none will ever be built again, and the entire uk nuclear indusrty is going to be turned into a cleanup operation. Which given their historical record will still be a disaster. Parts of Sellafield could still go critical because of the amount of nuclear material that has never been cleaned up properly.
Nuclear Convocation (Score:5, Funny)
LOLx2 Need More Nuclear Workers (Score:2)
This is a false shortage. The reason for
Re:LOLx2 Need More Nuclear Workers (Score:5, Interesting)
And the waste solutions.
Parent
Are you sure it doesn't stand for... (Score:5, Funny)
I would prefer to take the classes online (Score:2)
Political costs (Score:2)
Nuclear power for our future (Score:5, Informative)
The countries that have used nuclear power effectively have set up a program where they designed and certified a one, two, or a small handful of reactors. Then the built from those same reactors over and over and over again. Given that the amount of engineering man-hours in a nuclear reactor is staggeringly huge, this is a far more cost efficient than the US model where every nuclear power plant is a custom job.
Incidents are bound to occur in any sufficiently complex system. Due to safety conscious design, incidents in western commercial nuclear power plants are virtually never hazardous to the public. But it would be far better for a pump to fail prematurely at one plant, and have a message go out to 50 other plants to check that pump, rather than have every plant discover problems on their own.
Spent fuel reprocessing is probably a good idea too. It will reduce the amount of waste and also limit the amount of uranium mining. I recall that I once read that mine accidents dwarf every other cause of "commercial nuclear power" related deaths combined. If the remaining waste is glass-encapsulated and stored, it should be very stable and be cause for very little concern.
Finally, Americans must understand that every power generation technique has some impact. Fossil fuel plants likely contribute to tens of thousands of deaths each year - from mining/drilling operations, accidents transporting the product, people breathing the waste. Solar manufacturing exposes workers to fair numbers of toxic and hazardous chemicals. Hydroelectric plants have substantial envrinmental impact. Wind power is unsteady and kills birds. When these factors are all taken into account nuclear power looks fairly good on balance.
In the long run, I believe that a system of a large number of modern nuclear power plants built form a small number of designs should be operated as our "baseline" electrical energy source. The reactors will be supllemented with a system of solar, wind, and gas-turbine plants to accomodate peak demand. This system will minimize the impact on our environment, provide a high level of safety, and provid ethe power we need to grow.
Re:Nuclear power for our future (Score:3, Informative)
This [greenenergyohio.org], this [currykerlinger.com], and this [ceert.org] indicate otherwise. The statement that "Wind power...kills birds" presumably means "Wind power kills quite a lot of birds." No one would argue that wind turbines have killed a nonzero number of birds in the past, but the kill rate for wind turbines seems vastly dwarfed by the kill rates for other man-made structures... like regular b
WNU (Score:3, Funny)
A few thoughts on nuclear power (Score:5, Insightful)
A. Caird
B.S. Nuc. Eng. 1993 U. of Michigan
M.S. Nuc. Eng. 1996 U. of Michigan
(but I've never worked as a nuclear engineer; IT jobs are available in nearly every city in the world, computational reactor design jobs are not)
Take it for what it's worth.
Run for cover! (Score:3, Funny)
This giant University will destroy us all!
T-minus 15 minutes 'till impact!
Not a bad idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps now, this will provide the United States with an impetus to standardize on a reactor plant design. If the Federal Government approached nuclear power with the same notions as the U.S. Navy, perhaps we would see a greater role for nuclear power in our society. It is markedly more easy to design, develop, and implement a reactor plant design that can be certified; than it is to have to certify each individual reactor plant design. The U.S. Navy (and possibly other world Navies) certify a small number of designs and fabricators so that an inspection is all that is required. Example: The reactor system made by GE or Westinghouse has been certified by the Navy's nuclear regulatory authority and can be built immediately upon order from the Navy. A simple inspection and sea-trial are all that is required to validate its functionality. There is not a requirement that the design for that reactor be submitted for approval for each build, as the design has already been approved.
This is contrary to the public power generating stations. Each reactor and plant design must be submitted for review prior to the plant being built. It would be far wiser and more efficient to have the appropriate regulatory agency(s) (FERC, NRC, AEC...it changes) approve a set of reactor plant designs and their respective fabricators/construction agencies before a plant is needed. Example: A nuclear power plant design for 1000Mw, 500Mw, etc... has been approved for build by the appropriate agencies. Reliant Energy needs to expand its capacity to provide power by 500Mw in the next 3 years. Reliant has simply to consult the regulatory agencies list of approved design/fabricators to determine what they could build. The plant can be built immediately or as soon as possible and would only require inspections and testing, and would not require a design submission. This could shave off years of wait time for Reliant, and reduce the costs of electricity to consumers.
Biomass (Score:3, Informative)
Plus you can make gas, oil, alcohol, paper, etc. out of a lot of it. Take hemp [google.com] or algae [tve.org] for instance.
Rocky Mountain Institute (Score:3, Informative)
Economically, none of the existing ones have ever turned a profit without generous government assistance. I humbly submit an interesting organizations' website to this discussion: The Rocky Mountain Institute [rmi.org]. They are a think tank on environmental and energy issues, which strives not to have a particular agenda, but only to base their analyses on proven science and solid economic reasoning. They don't lobby governments, and most of their recommendations are squarely aimed at industries.
Also, the notion that solar energy generation could never provide enough energy without taking up too much space is absurd. A back of the envelope calculation shows that a desert installation of mirrors focused on heating towers (working prototypes exist) or photovoltaics with today's available efficiencies, can do the job. The USA's electricity demand could be met with an installation the size of Rhode Island.
Readers of The Industrial Physicist [aip.org] will also recall from a recent article (and discussion in the letters to the editor [aip.org]) that we are not limited to Earth-based generation. Within decades, we could be placing photovoltaic installation on the moon, and beaming the energy to stations on the Earth's surface by focussed microwaves.
Re:greenhouse gasses? (Score:3, Interesting)
Never mind that modern designs such as the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor don't use water as the coolant (it uses helium, which is inert, and does not absorb neutrons), so you don't have to worry about radioactive steam getting out, or a steam explosion, or the coolant changing AT ALL except for it's heat...
Never mind that als
Re:Stop financing weapons research (Score:3, Interesting)
IIRC, the solar and wind numbers you quoted are after large government subsidies of their own. I just googled for examples and found a site [solar-tec.com] offering on-grid solar systems in California with 50% of the costs offset by state government rebates and tax credits.
Taking this into account, solar might be costed at 16 to 40 cents per kwh. Nuclear's 13-18 cents looks like it might be competative. And that is not taking into account how stupidly inefficient