Splitting the Atom - The Nukes Post
I think if fusion power comes in our near future, perhaps even my lifetime, it would be one of the greatest world-changing events to ever happen. Unfortunately, tokamak has been in existence for more than fifty years with no appreciable success in solving our energy problems. There is a push to construct a larger fusion reactor, called the ITER, by around 2018, but this is still an experimental reactor that has some heavy criticisms to overcome: it may not produce net energy, it uses difficult to acquire deuterium and tritium, and it's VERY expensive. Cold fusion had its heyday in the late 80's and early 90's, and despite continued research coming from that realm of nuclear science, it appears that all signs toward nuclear energy created from cold fusion were premature and possibly fabricated. Polywell Fusion may well end up being the key to the success of fusion, but it is at least still six years away from commercial viability, and possibly could take even longer than that. (There's some dispute on whether Polywell Plasma Fusion is truly fusion or actually fission since Boron is split into Helium atoms...but I am neither qualified enough nor invested enough to actually care. It wouldn't function like the fission processes we know today.)
I could make this a long post about bashing wind and solar processes, but it doesn't serve me here and I explicitly don't want the reader to miss the forest for the trees. Wind, solar, tidal, hydro, and geothermal energy processes all work to some degree or other, but they don't work well - at least not well enough that we can afford to abandon burning fossil fuels. Very quickly I'll say this:
1. Solar is great at peak times, but our poor storage capabilities at the moment prevent solar from being our single power supply source. Orbital solar transfer (basically put large collectors above our atmosphere and beam power down to Earth by microwave) is dodgy and the microwave transmissions will undoubtedly have huge objections. Solar is the power of the future, but we cannot transition out of fossil fuels on this alone TODAY.
2. Did you know that Wind has a higher fatality rate per watt-hour produced than most renewable energies (only rooftop solar topping it by a long shot)? It's about 7 times higher than nuclear power, and I'm not excluding any notable events you might have heard of. Plus, Wind raises the temperature in areas where it is prevalent, kills migratory birds (and would kill oh-so-many more if we installed it throughout our Midwest like we'd need to for our power demands), and in the propeller format most commony observed is terribly inefficient. (EDIT NOTE: It's been pointed out to me that Wind power fatality rates per Twh have fallen as cumulative generation has increased. It actually was 10 times higher than nuclear before, and is now about 4 times higher than nuclear now.)
3. Our water aquifers are already stretched to the limit without compounding that problem by reducing water flow for Hydro power. Expect to see hydro power dams completely fall off the map in the next 30 years barring some drastic improvements in desalination. If the choice comes down to power or drinking water, drinking water is going to win (though this is a fallacious argument...if we lose the one, we'll lose the other).
4. Tidal. Eh, not sure what to say here. It works, but we don't know how well, and we don't know what the consequences are to marine life by putting large turbines under water. We can't shut down a coal plant over this.
5. Geothermal is great for heating your water and lowering your air conditioner and heater bills, but has not been shown to be viable on a large scale. This is a complementary technology, not a solution.
So, it's 2009, we have an administration that wants to reduce carbon emissions, and our remaining power choices are coal, gas, and nuclear fission (and trash, but it doesn't work well unless in a uniformly homogeneous stream and so just clouds the issue). Coal and Gas do a great job of solving our energy needs but totally fail regarding their production of greenhouse gases. As ironic as I find it considering my stance in the past, right now Nuclear Fission is our best hope for safe, clean power.
One of the scienceblogs, Built on Facts, has put up a list of all the reasons why we should choose nuclear fission. I have attempted to pull out the list and add to it a few key points that I think the author might've missed.
- It's reliable. It works anywhere we want it to be.
- It's safe. Modern reactors can't become Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. In the presence of a cooling failure the nuclear process stops and the rods are automatically removed. No worries about Homer being asleep at the control station.
- It's cheap. It's not the cheapest, and there are hidden costs, but if the choice is pay more for fixing environmental problems associated with fossil fuels or pay more for nuclear power, the higher hidden costs may well be unavoidable.
- It's environmentally friendly. Think I'm crazy? How much waste goes into the air in a nuclear facility? Into the water? People complain about "nuclear waste" but they really don't know what that is. I'll tell you what it is - 96 parts fuel still waiting to be used, 1 part precious metals like platinum, and 3 part radioactive byproducts. That's not waste, it's still an energy source. In fact, we have so much "waste" already mined and stored in our country that we could run enough modern nuclear reactors for current demand for over 100 years.
- It's environmentally friendly part 2. Yes, radioactive materials produced from nuclear fission initially carry lethal amounts of rads. What most people don't know is that in a short period of time (depending on rate of processing) that radioactivity is almost completely gone and storage then becomes easy. Also, once fully processed, the volume of radioactive material is several orders of magnitude smaller than what most people believe about our nuclear waste. In France, the volume of radioactive waste produced per year is about 100 cubic meters per facility per year. This is a total of 5900 cubic meters per year, or a 3 dimensional object that is roughly 18 meters by 18 meters by 18 meters in size, and for those of us stuck in the land of customary systems, 60 feet x 60 feet x 60 feet.
- It's politically convenient. Are you tired of sending billions of dollars to countries that at times are actively hostile to the US and our way of life? I know I am.
Thank you for taking the time to read down this far, and I hope you will check out all of the links. If you were only going to read one link today, though, please make it this one: a list of all the reasons why we should choose nuclear fission.