The Atomic Age is dying, but it refuses to die

The need for solutions to the problem of CO2 in the atmosphere has to be thinking about all the possibilities in the field of energy. At the moment we don’t find satisfactory solution is the replacement of fossil fuels and it is possible that there not be if we following that approach of happy hour with energy. One of these alternative solutions more like is nuclear power. Its attractive is economical, today it still retains the glamor of modern from old fashion times and it can keep the current power demand, which renewables can’t do. On the other hand you also against three things: a large part of public opinion oppose to it, too much size for main and strategic utility, and last and most important is expensive.

 

The Nuclear Energy was born from the need to lower the cost of producing plutonium for atomic bombs, and as to camouflage a civil military installation. So the origin is residual and with the price of energy at the time when it emerged it had made it unviable outside its strategic necessity. The oil crisis of the 70th led to Nuclear energy to be profitable, above all strategic because it could do competition to expensive oil: the inertia of the process made that a timely rise in oil prices was offset by nuclear had a fixed cost. At present, the reduced atomic arsenals stopped the demand for plutonium, but not entirely because plutonium degrades in the time and therefore should be renewed. On the other side isn’t interesting to have too much stock, mainly because it is expensive and dangerous to store, and once depleted uranium has ended to produce plutonium therefore we need to produce it as needed, except that we are close to an imminent nuclear war which would not rule.
David Biello has written in his blog in Scientific American in February 5, a post named “Is Nuclear Power Doomed to Dwindle?” where he talks about economic reasons for closing a nuclear power station. This paper laments that the U.S. and Europe and more recently in Japan are closed nuclear plants, which forced them to be replaced with the energy produced by coal power plants or natural gas; obviously in full effort to reduce CO2 emissions, which is not be happen. I was referring to a series of papers also in Scientific American about the future of nuclear energy, in especial “Reactivating Nuclear Reactors for the Fight against Climate Change” (Scientific American; January 26, 2009) also written by him in which he congratulate the return at work of a reactor and it went back to make new ones. Needless to say, the writer of these articles is an advocate of nuclear power and clearly committed as a possible solution, least momentarily due to the urgency of stopping combustion plants. Four years have gone between the two articles, what has changed so the energy world to make a much radical shift.
The first article (01/2009) coincides with the entry of Obama to the White House, so even when you head into the crisis we are still engaged in debauchery on energy of Bush (with the prominent help of China) where oil consumption arrived us so close of extraction peak* of this and consequent rise in prices exceeding 100 $ to barrel. In the context of energy consumption in almost exponential growth and exorbitant prices, expensive solutions such as nuclear energy or Fracking not are so; but the crisis has reduced energy consumption in the West that has moderate oil prices, while reducing the extraction, most of the Obama administration's commitment to renewable energy; slowed euphoria by Nuclear, to which is added a series of accidents attributable in part to neglect but mostly by exhaustion of infrastructure. The most expensive of nuclear energy isn’t its fuel as we might think, and indeed it is and much, but the context that surrounds it.
To understand the price of energy should really know what we mean. Everybody has heard to talk about of enriched uranium, plutonium, heavy water, nuclear waste... but exactly we haven’t a clear idea of what these things are and normally we say things that aren’t full correct or it’s completely false. Nuclear plants fuel is uranium, also it’s being used plutonium particularly in Japan because it was not a nuclear potency and the USA doesn’t buy now, under investigation with cobalt, thorium and other potential natural radioactive isotopes or of the same energy production. Like coal and other materials uranium obtained from the mining but only an isotope of this, 235, makes the nuclear reaction and its natural concentration is only 0.7% with unite of uranium mass. To produce a reaction is only necessary to increase the concentration until 4% or 5% to be productive in nuclear plant, for a weapon we need a 90%; but the enrichment is too expensive, and this is the reason that there are only a few uranium weapons and majority weapon are of plutonium. Isotopes of an element have no chemical difference between them so that we can’t use chemicals reaction to separate them and we only use the difference in mass and ballistic methods. We use diffusivity to separate them: at equal energy more velocity that minor mass, so I put in a centrifuge uranium
and less heavy isotope (which is what we want) is more concentrated on the outside and inside the heavier, percentage terms difference in mass between the two isotopes is very small (1.2%) for both the enrichment is not very high having to this operation many times to achieve the required enrichment; there is also a linear system used by the U.S. in World War II and the Cold War that is faster but overly expensive.
So our fuel is expensive to produce, but facilities are more. The nuclear power station is just a thermal plant but it makes a nuclear reaction instead combustion. Thermal plants have their own performance based on the temperature difference between the atmosphere or the river where waste heat is trashed and the temperature is released energy uses. Combustion plants burn around 900 C is the maximum temperature is reached at burning; on the contrary, nuclear power could well reach 10,000 C but at this temperature no material can handle it, and limiting not only here, radiation generated by the nuclear reaction is stopped by water, unlike combustion which vaporizes the water, nuclear should work on liquid phase. So our nuclear exceeds 300 C for two reasons: at 300 C the pressure is 160 atm. and 300 C we begin to dangerously approaching the critical point of water. Although the nuclear screening has a 40% yield the rest of energy heats the planet. At the same time we need a structure capable of supporting and manipulating 160 atm. of pressures. And the radioactivity limits their life and maintenance. Build it not has more difficulty than high-tech complex but when it begins to produce, radioactivity begins to poison the facilities, there are all kinds of protections but in time it begins to cross it away everything. Plants were intended to last only 50 years, and now some of these dates have already passed relatively good health through good maintenance and improvements, but sooner or later we must stop them. On the other hand wear items for use and some of its replacement or repair is a bit dangerous for workers. In fact shut plants they have been after a breakdown and there wasn’t possibility of return on the price of the repair.
On the other hand it isn’t so easy to close a nuclear plant. We must dismantle, decontaminate irradiated items to reprocessing and close within a sealed coffin the main central contaminated waiting between 70 and 100 years to can finish demolishing it. In Russia there is a cemetery on the shores of the Sea of Baren which remain pending drain sections of the hull the nuclear submarine where there was reactor.
To conclude the chapter costly expenses and dangerous to public health, add the most popular: residues. There are two types, one is the burned fuel which in highly radioactive with hazard of about 10,000 years what we must protected of terrorist and accidents, and B are tools, clothes, garbage and diverse parts not so dangerous but equally lethal.
These are all costs that aren’t usually included in the price declared by KW, and is not aware that this cost is spread far beyond the actual enjoyment. Caroline Lucas wrote in The Guardian “We don't need nuclear power to meet climate goals and keep the lights” where the most of lector comments disagree on the no necessity of nuclear power. As usual disinformation and propaganda are doing there is a current favorable to nuclear power once again, But the West has not been any major accident not mean that you should soon, it’s only a time question. For the reduction of atmospheric CO2 is necessary reduction in energy consumption. Additionally promote peace temperatures. Nuclear energy is not profitable and also it isn’t interested in mass production of military interest, so I think that is the energy path. This debate serves to keep the current nuclear industry alive as it may, and in turn we abandon real energy saving plans (not the nonsense that we have until today), something that favors the ever win. Those have already found ways to bypass the peak of oil extraction (thanks Fracking), crushing nature what is the only home we really have.

 

 

*The peak extraction is the point of maximum extraction of a site from which much longer we can only decrease, and this was associated with the depletion. Present it is believed that there are around 150 to 200 years of oil extraction, and where is the peak? Well oil by conventional means are sweating on the rocks is confined, so even more powerful bombs or more wells on the site that we have a limit which is the maximum amount that can be released per unit of time, of course these maximum last also decreases as decreasing the amount of oil remaining. In the early twenty-first set of petroleum fields on the planet could hardly increase production, with the consequent rise in prices, the solution found was the Fracking rather lower energy consumption.