Why not hot dry rocks? I’ve no problem with this technology in principle, but it is a nascent technology that needs to meet many technical challenges before commercialisation and will not be applicable worldwide even if viable. I’m not willing to bet our societies’ future on the chance that this MAY be an important energy source in the future.

The biggest problem is not the uranium in spent nuclear rods. The problem is all the nasty heavy isotopes spanning the periodic table. The same occurs when any material captures enough neutrons- it becomes radioactive. This includes the control rods and any other structures in a nuclear reactors. This makes nuclear reactors very expensive to decommission, FBRs especially so.

You seem to have a bit of a blindspot to limitless renewable energy available below the ground, almost everywhere on earth. Why do we need Nuclear when we have Hot Dry Rocks here in Australia??

Um, by every possible means; that’s an aspiration, if you’ll pardon the pun.

You could ask — click the link to Eli’s page.

The public health work on aerosol is among the knowledge the West should have been promoting decades ago — if we hadn’t seen China as a great chance to export our own polluting worst practices, they’d be better off and so would we. But now they’re doing what we did writ large and have the same problems we did in our day. It’s time to export what we’re good at.

Public health. Workplace organizing. Equal opportunity education.
Clean-burning stoves. Catalytic converters. Refineries that actually refine. And yes, Gen4 technology.

Without screwing it up by making it the cheapest possible way.

Public health, unions, workplace democracy –

India and China and many other developing countries should reduce their emissions of black carbon by 90% or more in the next decade. This will not only significantly reduce warming of the climate, it will make a major contribution to the health of their people. Simple and economical methods of doing this are available. …”

You had me until this. HOW?

David

Brief excerpt:

… it is clear that 4th generation nuclear power can be ready in the
medium-term, within about 20 years. …
… The United States will be far safer if it takes a leadership role in helping assure international standards and controls on the nuclear industry.
The reason that I bring up this topic again, especially in connection with India and China, is continued over-emphasis on “clean coal”, i.e., carbon capture and sequestration. That technology should be given a chance, but it is doubtful, even if it worked, that India and China will be willing to go to the enormous costs of implementation. On the other hand, they are choking in air pollution. Standardized, replicable nuclear power stations seem a more plausible bet than “clean coal”.

I always make clear that energy efficiency and renewable energy should have first priority, and if they can do everything, great. But we would be foolish to take that as a presumption or to remove options for our descendants. It was a mistake to terminate the R&D on 4th generation nuclear power at Argonne Laboratory in 1994, but we still have the best expertise in the world. They deserve much more support, and we should be working in full cooperation with China, India, and other countries….

—- end excerpt from Hansen

This fits well with Eli’s plan — to make reduction of black carbon aerosol the big priority for the poor countries in the short term as their contribution of immediate action:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/07/eli-rabetts-simple-plan-to-save-world.html

“… Eli Rabett’s Simple Plan to Save the World (Part II):

India and China and many other developing countries should reduce their emissions of black carbon by 90% or more in the next decade. This will not only significantly reduce warming of the climate, it will make a major contribution to the health of their people. Simple and economical methods of doing this are available. …”

My point is that it’s not always say, 1 coal plant shutdown with 1 nuclear one (take your pick of technology). I’ts more of 1MW of capacity of coal shutdown for 1 MW of capacity of nuclear. You get a ‘surplus’ this way since there is a normal 10 to 30% capacity difference between coal and nuclear. I expect, that will a better ‘return’ for nuclear, a lot of gas will be shutdown as well even if our focus is on phasing out coal. And this only if load changing is build it (which it is with the LFTR) and contracts for deployment based on capacity and and not real power produced (thus eliminating the need to run plants flat out).

Charles notes that with hot-salt storage being a *function* of any MSR, that storage of hot salt becomes an automatic reservoir for peaking power, thus eliminating much need for gas even as a coal plant is shut down.

And yes…it’s all about the money :)

For Australia and Europe and N America NG seems the lowest cost method of providing short term peak power(and is fairly low CO2 producing). We could spend more to eliminate using NG, but it would make more sense to spend the resources on eliminating coal and then re-forestation and improving soil carbon uptake in agriculture.

Wind, solar and nuclear are all capital intensive and all indirectly generate CO2 during construction. Overbuilding has environmental costs as well as economic costs. Eventually all NG will be exhausted so yes one day we will not use any FF energy.

With apologies to Helen and Ian, who I know disagree with me on this issue, I believe the dialogue here represents the sort of scientific public debate we need the courage to have and listen to without hysteria, about whether IFR nuclear solutions should be included in Australia’s energy mix planning for the future.

At least that is, unless we all ready to embrace a Heinberg/Holmgren/Hopkins/Cuba, et al, ‘power-down’ or ‘energy decent’ type of future.

This is because until the fossil fuel industry allows one of our govts to do the necessary renewable industry scientific technology review and in-depth research, we won’t know for sure whether renewables can deliver all the electricity that our growing population will need – by the time we are forced to stop burning coal.

And the latter, I believe, is likely to happen a lot sooner than the coal industry would like or admit to.

………../Chris

Chemical heat-pump system working at exhaust temperatures of high-temperature-gas-cooled reactor
Fukada, S., Edao, Y., Terashita, M. 2009 International Journal of Hydrogen Energy 34 (1), pp. 540-546

Thermodynamic and economic analyses of HTGR cogeneration system performance at various operating conditions for proposing optimized deployment scenarios
Zhang, Q., Yoshikawa, H., Ishii, H., Shimoda, H. 2008 Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology 45 (12), pp. 1316-1325

Charles Barton’s July 4th Independence Day contribution over on his nuclear green site clearly lays out how, with just the LFTR, this can be accomplished. I think one has to “Aim High” in this regard. Or, in the case of your comments, “HighER” :)

David

Run-of-the-River hydro is something that needs to be explored and implemented if cheap enough and it could increase US hydro output into the double-digits.

By hydro by and large no something, like a wind mill, that you can simply plop down and count it as ‘renewables’.

Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela are big “renewables” electrical economies: 80% and more. Good for them. But even growth in these countries are forcing them to consider building more nuclear, which is happening in Brazil and Venezuela is considering it.

David

The real savings is not on using exactly the same plant, but more the Balance of Plant (BOP) which is HUGE, to list but a few:

1. common grid access, even using the same main transformer banks.
2. massive lay-down yard for components when building.
3. extremely well maintained heavy equipment access to the site via roads, rail and rivers used for bringing in coal.
4. established site licenses for everything from sewage access to hazardous materials handling.
5. a well skilled workforce from which to draw on for operations and maintenance.
6. most auxillary systems in place from fire fighting to storage to offices to control rooms to lubrication oil storage tanks and to auxillary diesels and so on.
7. licenses for use of, and equipment for, turbine cooling. (tunnels, water access, circulating water pumps, condenser, etc).

I think these are where the real saving are from coal2nuclear.

David

Right now I’m 42 floors above a city in an industrial zone in China. There are factories and high rise apartments densely packed for as far as I can see in all directions, which isn’t all that far because of the smog. I drove two hours at 140 km/hr, and didn’t see the end of it. This is what we have to power, and more cheaply than coal.

I also happen to be incarcerated in my hotel room by the CDC for a week due to swine flu quarantine, which blows (I’m not sick).