Energy revolution is coming?

Apparently, a reactor is being developed, that can burn depleted uranium, with fuel elements able to last 60 years before refueling. They burn up fissionable elements much more comlpetely than a typical existing reactor, this dramatically reducing the amount of materials to be disposed.

Practical use of these reactors seems to be a long shot, but if they succeed, it will be a revolution.

And the Warthog may need a new type of bullet.

Wes

The optimistic view here, is that if we find a source of very cheap energy, and convert to mostly electric cars, then we will need a much smaller amounts of oil, for chemical industry, nylon stockings, and such.

Without the need for nearly as much oil, we will not need the Middle East much, would not care about its "issues" and may need a lot less depleted uranium bullets.

Also if the demand for 2/3 of currently produced oil and natural gas is removed, then the prices may follow the demand.

in a very steep depreciation of many existing assets and a considerable monetary and political influence loss to some very powerful people and organizations. You can see some of the arguments being ginned up against at

Unka George (George McDuffee) .............................. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author. The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).

Google: Japan fuel cell

Havn't really thought hard about this, but essentially it's the same argument that was made for the fast breeder back in the 70's. Unfortunately, as designs of these were refined, it turned out that their breeding ratios were not so good. There *are* attractions in sodium cooled reactors (compact, stable, unpressurised), but also serious engineering down-sides (for example fatigue in the structures caused by surface waves on the sodium pools). And the chemistry/engineering of the secondary side is difficult.

If you are worried about the costs of enrichment, you can go back to building natural uranium reactors (but they are big and expensive).

But enrichment isn't that expensive these days, and new uranium is currently readily available. The "Westinghouse" and "European" advanced PWRs are built on a *lot* of operational experience, and the designs have converged to a fair extent on "intrinsically safe" characteristics.

If a EV could do 200 miles on a charge, I'd be interested, 400 miles, I'm an acolyte. We would need to set up battery exchanges and standardized packs for longer distance driving. Hybrids have some a lot of short commings. You carry two different power plants to get places. That isn't energy efficient. It is just a crutch for low capacity batteries.

Anyone that thinks GW1 and GW2 was not about oil is not thinking. The only reason we give a chit about the ME other than Israel is oil.

Well we can hope. I'm fairly sure the producers keep an eye on demand and throttle supply.

Wes

Lowering the demand that much would drive the price through the roof.

I am sure that it will be possible. Progress is being made daily towards that.

I have to agree.

Sounds just like all the rest of the alternative energy developments.

The problem is that as soon as people actually hear the words "we plan to build the reactor in your town" all the NIMBYS come out to stop it.

There was a real nice wind project that was going to be built in my area. 99.9% of the locals wanted it, the town, county and state all wanted it. The NIMBYS managed to spend enough money to kill it!!!

Solar cells - In a few years these silicon items will be a cheap and plentiful power source and will replace our need for fossil fueled power plants. (Started in the late 50's) Still hearing the same things today.

Wind power - Home based power regional generation will make it possible to eliminate the miles of wiring and large substations across the country. (Started in the 30's) Still hearing the same things today.

How about those orbiting solar power plants that were going to beam the power to the ground using radio? Haven't seen those yet.

Hybrid cars, Electric only, Steam, Kinetic energy, ALL have been pushed as the GREAT SAVIOR.

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:59:59 -0500, the infamous Wes scrawled the following:

Let's use up all the horrible, ghastly, dangerous, toxic lead stores we now have. Who cares if enemy countries get contaminated? ;^) It's not quite as heavy, but it does have a history of usefulness in weaponry, non?

-- I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. -- John Adams

On Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:53:46 -0600, the infamous Ignoramus4212 scrawled the following:

Good.

Yes, possible.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! He make joke.

-- I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. -- John Adams

I lost you here Richard, why do you think so?

I admit that I'm not on top of all the latest, but there have been vast and wonderful innovations in nuclear power for the past thirty years but there has always been one group or another that has always managed to squash implementation. I seriously doubt that that trend won't continue. There are way too many sub-plots and agendas in this soap opera. Clean, cheap plentiful energy isn't really the goal of the people that say it is.

We now know that the KGB was funding the anti-nuke movement, cleverly funding locally-initiated ideas they agreed with and not those they didn't so their steering influence was invisible to the leadership. As long as we depended on oil tankers they believed they could strangle us with submarines. I don't have a quotable reference for this, possibly the source was the Mitrokhin Archive though 'anti' and 'nuclear' aren't in the book's index.

Vasili Mitrokhin was the archivist for the KGB's foreign service. He secretly copied as many damning documents as he could and smuggled them out to Britain, giving us an incredibly thorough list of spies and secret operations. Yes, the Rosenbergs were guilty, Julius much more than Ethel who was complicit but inept.

The current opposition to any and all practical sources of energy doesn't seem to make sense, who would benefit? There's enough opposition to even such a simple answer as hanging laundry out to dry that a support group has formed, Project Laundry List. Somehow my nonscientific left-wing acquaintances have been convinced that if we all think correct thoughts a miracle will save us.

There's very little real interest in living low-impact lifestyles, only in imposing them on others. In alt.energy.homepower I've posted the simple and low-cost DIY ways I use to cut my energy use to 5 KWH a day and two cords of wood a year in a standard New England suburban development house and had almost no response asking for the details I purposely left out.

jsw

Less demand - less production - higher prices for what there is of it.

Such artificial price manipulation has worked for gem-quality diamonds but only because their strategic irrelevance means DeBeers' monopoly can be safely tolerated. Industrial diamonds are far cheaper. You can buy grinder dressers for $10-$20 a carat.

OPEC can't even control its own membership, let alone outsiders. How fast and far did oil fall at the start of the recession?

jsw

There *are* attractions in

Yeah, Detroit Edison had their Fermi plant in the late 60's. A piece of molybdenum (I think) that was supposed to spread a fuel meltdown around the bottom of the reactor vessel in the worst-case scenario broke loose from fatigue and plugged up the cooling channels. They had a serious fuel melting that turned the reactor into scrap. Even worse, they had to spend about a billion $ in todays money to build a plant to remove and safely containerize the liquid sodium so they could get in there and see what went wrong.

I thnk gas-cooled reactors with ceramic fule pellets makes a LOT more sense than some of these other technologies.

Jon