Showing posts with label spent fuel. Show all posts

Thursday, June 16, 2022

We solved nuclear waste decades ago

Monday, December 20, 2021

Five Facts about Nuclear Waste

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

An Existing Site Policy for Small Nuclear Reactors

Commercial Nuclear sites in the US (Credit: US NRC)

by Marcel F. Williams

Commercial nuclear power currently provides more than 19% of the electricity in the US, and about 53% of America's-- carbon neutral-- electricity. But in combination with renewable energy resources (hydroelectric, wind, solar, etc.), only 36% of America's electricity generation is carbon neutral.

The Palo Verde nuclear site in Arizona is the largest power plant in the United States, generating 3.3 GW (gigawatts) of electricity. But existing nuclear sites can be much larger. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear site in Japan has seven nuclear reactors with a gross installed capacity of 8,212MW.

There are currently 60 nuclear sites in the US, generating more than 100 GW of electricity. If all sixty of these existing sites were generating at least 8 GW of electricity then commercial nuclear power could generate 480 GW of carbon neutral electricity (93% of current US electricity production). Combined with current renewable energy production, all of America's electricity could be carbon neutral with a 10% surplus in carbon neutral electricity production.

Global mortality rate for electricity production (Credit: Forbes)

Of course, building new nuclear power plants has been politically and economically difficult in the US for decades even though commercial nuclear power has the lowest fatality rate of any electric power producing facilities. And even some existing nuclear sites in the US are scheduled for complete decommissioning. However, a new generation of small nuclear reactors could make it safer and cheaper for existing nuclear sites in the US to produce substantially more carbon neutral electricity.

X-Ray of NuScale Reactor Assembly (Credit: NuScale)

In Portland, Oregon, a company called NuScale is developing a new type of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) that could be centrally mass produced and transported (in three segments) by truck, rail or by barge practically anywhere in the world.

NuScale's nuclear reactor technology has many advantages:

1. They're inherently safe. The large surface area to volume of the small 60 MWe reactors doesn't physically allow the nuclear fuel contained in these reactors to ever get hot enough for the fuel to melt. Even if water is totally evaporated or lost from the reactor, the surrounding air will still provide enough natural cooling for the nuclear material to remain solid. While commercial nuclear power is still the safest way to produce electricity per kilowatt produced, replacing existing nuclear power plants with NuScale units should increase nuclear safety substantially more.

2. NuScale would also place their small nuclear reactors underground making them less vulnerable extreme weather conditions or potential acts of terrorism.

3. A power producing facility can operate in packs of up to 12 reactors (720 MWe) so that the plant can continue producing electricity while one or more of the reactors is being removed for refueling

4. A NuScale 720 MWe facility would only require 60 acres (18 hectares) of land. A wind powered facility that could produce a similar amount of electricity would require 130,000 acres (200 square miles). A centralized solar power plant would require 32 to 54-- square kilometers-- of land in order to equal the electricity production of an 18 hectare 720 MWe NuScale facility.

Notional 18 hectares NuScale 720 MWe site (Credit: NuScale)

Current nuclear power plants require 1.3 square miles for a single 1000 MWe nuclear facility. And most existing nuclear sites were originally designed to accommodate two to four 1000 MWe reactors. So, in theory, the 2.6 to 5.2 square miles in area of current nuclear sites could easily accommodate several 720 MWe NuScale power units. So NuScale facilities could easily produce more than 8000 MWe of electricity at existing nuclear sites in the US.

NuScale nuclear reactor component being transported by rail (Credit: NuScale)

While commercial nuclear power plants produce base load electricity, they have to be complimented with regional electric power units capable of producing peak load electricity or back up electricity in case a nuclear facility has to be temporarily shutdown because of refueling or because of a natural disaster such as an earthquake or tsunami.

10.7 MWe rated methanol electric power plant at Point Lisas, Trinidad (Credit: Mendenhall Technical Services):

Natural gas electric power plants have the lowest capital cost. But natural gas is a fossil fuel that would increase global warming and the rise of global sea levels. Fortunately, natural gas power plants can be cheaply and conveniently retrofitted to use-- methanol. And nuclear electricity could be used to produce methanol directly from air and water or through the microwave pyrolysis of urban garbage and sewage, agricultural biowaste, and from forest waste (dead trees and other fire hazardous forest materials). Methanol dehydrated into dimethyl ether could be used as a diesel fuel substitute for vehicles cheaply retrofitted to use dimethyl ether. Methanol can be converted into carbon neutral gasoline and carbon neutral jet fuel. Methanol can be used directly a cleaner marine fuel substitute for sea vessels. And methanol can be used directly in fuel cell/battery powered automobiles, trucks, sea craft, and even aircraft.

Methanol powered ferry (Credit: Stena Germanica)

The increased electrical capacity of existing nuclear sites could also be used to produce hydrogen for the next generation of supersonic and hypersonic aircraft and space launch vehicles. Hydrogen could also be used for the carbon neutral production of ammonia for fertilizer for the agricultural industry.

Notional hydrogen fueled hypersonic airliner (Credit: Reaction Engines)

In Arizona, using NuScale reactors to increase electrical capacity at the Palo Verde site to 8000 MWe (4700 MWe of additional power) could be used to supply more-- carbon neutral-- electricity to neighboring California and for the Sonora and Baja California provinces of Mexico. Mexico could use the additional power supplied by the US to pump-- seawater-- directly from the Gulf of California into salt water reservoirs near the Arizona/Sonora border. Such seawater reservoirs could be used for the creation of recreational marine water lakes in southern Arizona and for the production of needed potable water through nuclear powered desalination.

If the US, finally, begins to recycling at least some of its spent fuel from commercial nuclear sites then it might be politically easier to reopen nuclear sites that have been decommissioned or are scheduled to be decommissioned for the deployment of inherently safe NuScale reactors.

Existing sites can easily accommodate the relatively tiny amounts of spent nuclear fuel produced at commercial facilities. But some US states have laws preventing the deployment of new nuclear reactors until there is a long term solution for spent fuel. So clearly demonstrating that spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors can be recycled to produce more energy should nullify any state measures that attempt to use spent fuel as an excuse for not building more nuclear power plants.

The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) is a Federally owned utility that could start the process of recycling spent fuel by utilizing plutonium extracted from spent fuel in thorium fuel configurations in existing nuclear power plants and in future SMRs. The TVA should also be one of the first American utilities to deploy the next generation fast reactors that would be fully capable of utilizing spent fuel.

References and Links

US electricity production in 2018

Top ten nuclear power plants by capacity

NuScale's Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Passes Biggest Hurdle Yet

How much land does nuclear, solar, and wind really need?

The Ultimate fast facts guide to nuclear energy

Land needs for wind, solar dwarf nuclear power plant's footprint

Producing renewable jet fuels from methanol

Utilizing renewable methanol to power electric commuter aircraft

Methanol as a marine fuel

Renewable methanol as liquid electricity

Serenergy's 800 kilometer plugin hybrid methanol fuel cell car

Thor and the thorium solution for plutonium from commercial nuclear reactors

LAPCAT A2 hypersonic hydrogen fueled airliner

Monday, August 6, 2018

Thor and the Thorium Solution for Plutonium from Commercial Nuclear Reactors

"Thor's battle with the giants" painting by Mårten Eskil Winge (1872)

by Marcel F. Williams

Because of the political inability to deal with the long term disposal of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors in the US by the federal government, some states in the US have banned the building of new commercial nuclear power plants.

California state law, for instance, has banned the construction of new commercial nuclear power plants until the US Federal government establishes a long-term policy on the disposal of spent fuel (nuclear waste). And with current plans to close its last nuclear power plant (Diablo Canyon) by the year 2025, California will eventually have no nuclear facilities providing carbon neutral electricity to its nearly 40 million residents.

While the US has principally focused on finding a permanent site for the spent fuel from its commercial nuclear facilities, some nations, such as France, have focused on recycling the plutonium component of spent fuel while storing away the fissile and fertile uranium for perhaps future use in commercial nuclear reactors-- plus the residual radioactive material that cannot be recycled

While France mixes plutonium with uranium 238 (MOX) to partially recycle nuclear waste in its current light water reactors, this process produces even more plutonium. But a Swedish company (Thor Energy) has come up with an alternative solution. They propose mixing the plutonium from spent fuel with fertile thorium instead of fertile uranium 238. The utilization of such fuel in conventional light water reactors would allow for the plutonium to be incinerated while producing electricity while producing fissile uranium 233 that could be eventually extracted and used to enrich the spent fuel containing fissile uranium 235 and fertile uranium 238 stored away. This would allow most spent fuel produced from nuclear reactors to be recycled to produce even more carbon neutral energy.

North American Thorium Deposits

Countries with the Largest Thorium Reserves (tonnes)

India ......................    846,000
Turkey...................     744,000
Brazil ....................     606,000
Australia ...............    521,000
USA ......................     434,000
Egypt....................      380,000
Norway.................      320,000
Venezuela.............      300,000
Canada.................      172,000
Russia..................       155,000
South Africa........      148,000
China...................      100,000
Greenland..............     86,000
Finland..................      60,000
Sweden..................      50,000
Kazakhstan............     50,000

Thor Energy envisions using a mix of 90% thorium and 10% plutonium in conventional light water reactors. Thorium Mox could also be used in future underwater light water nuclear reactors such as France's FlexBlue system. Remotely sited underwater reactors could be used to produce carbon neutral synfuels (methanol, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, etc.) which could be shipped to coastal towns and cities around the world for transportation and local heat and electricity production.

Links and References

Thor Energy

California's last nuclear power plant to close by 2025

Spent Fuel and the Thorium Solution

Blue submarine: The Flexblue offshore nuclear reactor

The Case for Remotely Sited Underwater Nuclear Reactors

Siting Ocean Nuclear Power Plants in Remote US Territorial Waters for the Carbon Neutral Production of Synfuels and Industrial Chemicals

Will Russia and China Dominate Ocean Nuclear Technology?

The Future of Ocean Nuclear Synfuel Production

Floating Nuclear Power Plants, Floating Power Barges, and Marine Methanol

Nuclear Navy's Synfuel from Seawater Program: An interview with Kathy Lewis of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Spent Fuel and the Thorium Solution

Thorium deposits in North America (Credit:USGS)

by Marcel Williams

Humanity currently exist in a global energy economy that is dominated by fossil fuels. And the combustion of fossil fuels by our industrial civilization has created atmospheric conditions with an ever increasing CO2 (carbon dioxide) content. The carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is now higher than it has ever been in the history of the human species. In fact, it is higher than in the entire history of our genus, Homo, which first emerged in sub-Saharan Africa more than 2.5 million years ago.

At approximately 400 parts per million, current CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere may be as high as they were during the Pliocene Epoch when sea levels may have been 10 to 40 meters higher than they are today. And as long as we continue to use fossil fuels, the CO2 content in the Earth's atmosphere is likely to reach levels not seen since the Earth was devoid of polar ice caps altogether which could eventually raise global sea levels above 60 meters.

So thanks to the humongous energy needs of our modern civilization, future generations face the possibility of living in a much warmer world with substantially higher sea levels. Rising sea levels could eventually flood most of the world's coastal areas including some of the world's major cities.

Altruistically, our current civilization should be trying to create a better tomorrow for future generations. Unfortunately, there are global economic interest that have tens of trillions of dollars invested in the fossil fuel economy. And their priorities are to make near term profits-- even at the expense of humanity's long term environmental and economic future. Of course, America's capitalist system exist within a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. So within a democratic republic, free people have the ultimate responsibility to make sure that our civilization doesn't wreck the environment for future generations.

While there are viable technological alternatives to the fossil fuel economy, there are many who actually fear the-- best technological solution-- to the problem of global warming and the deposition of excess CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere: nuclear energy.

Commercial nuclear power is the principal carbon free producer of electricity in the United States, producing more than three times as much carbon free electricity as hydroelectricity, six times as much as wind, and more than 100 times as much carbon free electricity as solar. And this is in spite the fact that the United States pretty much halted the building of new nuclear power plants in the US for more than thirty years.

Commercial nuclear energy is also the safest form of electricity production ever created. Even if you include the accidents at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island, nuclear energy production is still substantially safer than using coal, natural gas, hydroelectricity, solar, or wind.

Energy Mortality Rate (deaths per trillion kilowatt hours)

US Coal -------- 15,000

Natural Gas ------ 4000

Hydroelectric ---- 1400

Solar (rooftop) ---- 440

Wind ---------------- 150

Nuclear ---------------90

Although the United States has more commercial nuclear reactors in operation than any other nation on Earth, the construction of new reactors in the US still lags well behind China and Russia and even behind India, and Europe. While the next generation of small centrally mass produced nuclear reactors should be available for commercial service in the US by the 2020's, the future domestic demand for such reactors by US utilities is still clouded by the fact that there is still no long term solution to the political problem of spent fuel which is often referred to as nuclear waste.

Number of nuclear reactors currently (9/18/2014) under construction by nation:

CHINA------------------------------------------     27
RUSSIA-----------------------------------------     10
INDIA--------------------------------------------     6
KOREA, REPUBLIC OF ---------------------    5
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -----------   5
JAPAN ---------------------------------------------2
PAKISTAN -------------------------------------    2
SLOVAKIA -------------------------------------    2
TAIWAN ------------------------------------------ 2
UKRAINE---------------------------------------     2
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES-----------------     2
FRANCE -----------------------------------------    1
ARGENTINA-----------------------------------     1
BELARUS ---------------------------------------    1
BRAZIL ------------------------------------------    1
FINLAND ----------------------------------------    1


What to do with the spent fuel once its removed from commercial nuclear reactors is one of the most difficult political obstacles hampering the approval and construction of new nuclear reactors in the US. Within some American States, it is even illegal to build new nuclear reactors until there is a permanent repository or another long term solution to the problem of nuclear waste.

The irony in all of this, of course, is the fact that relative to other electric power producing facilities, nuclear power plants actually create very little toxic waste. A 1000 MWe nuclear power plant only produces about 27 tonnes of spent fuel every year. That's a quantity that is so small that all of the radioactive material ever produced from the commercial nuclear power industry in the US could be placed in an area the size of a football field only a few meters high. That's it!

A 1000 MWe coal power plant, on the other hand, produces approximately 400,000 tonnes of toxic material every year: ash from coal power plants that is contaminated with toxic materials such as mercury, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium which can contaminate drinking water supplies and damage the human nervous system and other vital organs. The ash pumped into the atmosphere of a coal power plants also expose surrounding populations to approximately 100 times more background radiation than a nuclear power plant does. Coal power plants, of course, are the primary producers of greenhouse gasses amongst electric power facilities.

But even solar energy produces substantially more toxic waste than commercial nuclear reactors. Per kilowatt of electricity produced, the toxic materials required to produce rooftop solar panels and the toxic materials contained in the dismantling of solar panels is quantitatively at least 10,000 times that of the toxic materials produced from the nuclear industry. So the toxic waste produced from commercial nuclear power plants is miniscule compared to the toxic waste produced from the solar panel industry.

Ironically, most of the spent fuel produced from a commercial nuclear power plant is actually not waste at all. More than 95% of the fissile and fertile material contained in spent fuel can actually be recycled. This is already been successfully done to a partial degree in countries like France where plutonium is extracted from spent fuel and then mixed with depleted uranium 238.

But way back in 1982, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Beaver County, Pennsylvania was shut down after utilizing enriched uranium in a blanket of thorium 232 for five years. In 1987, it was reported that the core of the light water thorium reactor contained 1.3% more fissile material than it had when it was originally fueled. This clearly demonstrated that a light water breeder reactor could produce more fissile material than it consumed if fissile material was utilized in a blanket of fertile thorium.

So plutonium could be extracted from the spent fuel of Light Water Reactors and mixed with thorium in order to produce carbon free electricity in Light Water Thorium Reactors while burning up the plutonium.   The fissile uranium produced from the conversion of thorium 232 into uranium 233 could then be mixed with the with depleted uranium or reprocessed uranium from spent fuel to produce power in current Light Water Reactors. Burning plutonium from spent fuel in Light Water Thorium Reactors while utilizing uranium 233 from thorium reactors for reuse in Light Water Uranium Reactors could demonstrate that more than 95% of the material in spent fuel can be recycled. Recycling the fissile material in spent fuel would dramatically reduce the already meager amount of radioactive material that has to be sequestered into nuclear waste site. And this could help to end the prohibition against building new nuclear reactors in some States in the United States.

Countries with the Largest Thorium Reserves (tonnes)

India ......................    846,000
Turkey...................     744,000
Brazil ....................     606,000
Australia ...............    521,000
USA ......................     434,000
Egypt....................      380,000
Norway.................      320,000
Venezuela.............      300,000
Canada.................      172,000
Russia..................       155,000
South Africa........      148,000
China...................      100,000
Greenland..............     86,000
Finland..................      60,000
Sweden..................      50,000
Kazakhstan............     50,000

However, the moderation of neutrons could be reduced if the water content of the thorium reactor were reduced by 25 to 50%. This would allow the reactor to burn the other radioactive waste products in a solid fuel mix with plutonium and thorium. That, of course, would completely eliminate the need to bury any spent fuel products created by commercial nuclear reactors.

There's only enough-- terrestrial uranium-- to produce all of the electricity and synfuels required to power all of human civilization at current levels for about 15 years. However, there's more than 4 billion tonnes of uranium in seawater, enough provide all of the energy needs for human civilization for more than 3600 years. Recycling the spent uranium and might extend this to over 5000 years. Utilizing the plutonium from Uranium Light Water Reactors to power Thorium Light Water Reactors, could power human civilization for 2800 years.

So a uranium and thorium economy could power human civilization at current levels for nearly 8000 years. Beyond this point, plutonium/uranium breeder reactors would finally be required to continue to power human civilization on Earth by solely using nuclear fission.

Thorium deposits on the lunar surface (credit:NASA)

However, additional sources of thorium could be mined on the surface of the Moon, a resource that's only a few days away by chemical rockets. Because there is no life on the Moon, thorium could be exploited much more extensively on the lunar surface than on Earth, perhaps to a level that could allow lunar thorium to power a nuclear fuel economy on Earth forever.

Marcel Williams

Links and References

Atmospheric CO2 decline during the Pliocene intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciations

Departures from eustasy in Pliocene sea-level records

National Geographic: Rising Seas

How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt? We Rank The Killer Energy Sources

Under Construction Reactors

State Restrictions on New Nuclear Power Facility Construction

Radioactive Waste Management

Safely Managing Used Nuclear Fuel

Spent Fuel Transport & Storage

The real waste problem, solar edition

Light Water Breeder Reactor: Adapting A Proven System

How thorium can solve the nuclear waste problem in conventional reactors

The Thorium Dream

The Thorium Alternative

Use of Reprocessed Uranium

Fueling our Nuclear Future

USGS Map of Thorium Deposits in North America

Thorium Deposits on the Moon

Friday, June 20, 2014

Spent Fuel Transport & Storage

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Stop Destroying Uranium 233

Saturday, May 1, 2010

The Traveling Wave Nuclear Reactor

Capable of using uranium 238 or thorium 232 for fuel, a Traveling Wave nuclear reactor could potentially increase global terrestrial nuclear energy supplies by hundreds of times. And if uranium from seawater is utilized, then such reactors could provide all of the electricity and synfuels required to power human civilization as long as the Earth exist!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

First CANDU Utilization of Recycled Uranium from LWR Spent Fuel in China

CANDU Reactor in China first to directly use recovered uranium fuel

Major milestone demonstrates CANDU's fuel cycle flexibility

BEIJING, March 23 /CNW/ - Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) announced today that the first-ever fuel bundle to directly use recovered uranium from light water reactors was successfully placed in the Qinshan CANDU Unit 1 Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) on Monday, March 22.
A ceremony to commemorate the event was held at the Qinshan site and was attended by senior Chinese government officials along with representatives from AECL and its Chinese partners Third Qinshan Nuclear Power Company (TQNPC), Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC) and China North Nuclear Fuel Corporation (CNNFC).
Over the next six months, a total of 24 Natural Uranium Equivalent (NUE) fuel bundles will be inserted into two separate fuel channels at the Qinshan Unit 1 reactor in Haiyan, China. NUE fuel is made by mixing recovered uranium from spent fuel of light water reactors with depleted uranium from enrichment plant tails. The irradiation of all 24 NUE bundles will be completed in approximately 12 months.
"This commercial demonstration of NUE fuel is a first-of-a-kind advanced fuel collaborative effort for the parties and highlights the beginning of the engineering application of CANDU advanced fuel cycles," stated AECL President and Chief Executive Officer, Hugh MacDiarmid. "It establishes CANDU's ability to utilize alternative fuel cycles and demonstrates the strong synergy between CANDU technology and light water reactor technology."
The commercial demonstration of NUE fuel in the CANDU reactor is the final phase of a three-phase joint research project between AECL and its three Chinese partners, TQNPC, NPIC and CNNFC. The project was initiated in 2008 to explore the use of recovered uranium from light water reactors in a CANDU reactor and to prove that it is the simplest, most cost-effective and environmentally-friendly process to utilize alternative fuel sources.
AECL's Chief Technology Officer Dr. Anthony De Vuono added, "As a proven commercial power reactor, our Enhanced CANDU 6 has the highest neutron efficiency compared to other competing technologies and consumes about 30% less natural uranium. Our NUE fuel cycle opens up a sustainable development path leading to an overall extension of uranium fuel resources while, at the same time, reusing the spent fuel from light water reactors."
In December 2009, an expert panel comprised of representatives from China's leading nuclear academic, government, industry and R&D organizations unanimously recommended that China consider building two new CANDU units to take advantage of CANDU's unique capabilities in utilizing alternative fuels.
The existing Qinshan Phase III nuclear power plant includes two 728 MWe CANDU 6 PHWR reactors designed by AECL and built in cooperation with TQNPC. The two CANDU units are ranked among the top performing nuclear power stations in China.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2010/23/c3481.html

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

How France Recycles Nuclear Waste

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Recycling Nuclear Waste

Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Nuplex Solution

by Marcel F. Williams

In 1982, the United States Congress passed a law requiring the Department of Energy to find a suitable site to construct a disposal facility for the radioactive spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. In 2005, 52,000 tonnes of spent fuel was being held at nuclear power and military facilities in the US. And it is estimated that by 2015, the nation's nuclear power facilities will be storing over 75,000 metric tons of spent fuel on site. There are laws preventing the expansion of nuclear power within several States in the US until a final storage solution is found for the radioactive spent fuel accumulating at current commercial nuclear reactor sites. And to fund such a permanent storage facility, nuclear utilities have paid nearly $30 billion in fees and interest to a Federal “nuclear waste fund”.

Nuclear Energy Institute map of stored radioactive waste from the commercial and military nuclear industry

Eventually, Yucca Mountain became the Department of Energy's solution to the nations nuclear waste problem. Over 2 billion dollars has been spent studying the Yucca Mountain area in Nevada with an additional 5 to 6 billion dollars to finish the facility by 2010. But there has been strong political and environmental opposition to storing spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain facility. Harry Reid, Senator from Nevada and the current leader of the US Senate, strongly opposes Yucca Mountain as a repository for the nation's nuclear waste material. And President Barack Obama ran in opposition to utilizing the Yucca Mountain facility for radwaste deposition during his campaign for president.

So it now seems unlikely that the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada will be utilized for the deposition of the nation's spent fuel. And the Nuclear Energy Institute has reportedly recently advanced the idea that President Barack Obama convene a blue ribbon nuclear waste commission to find an alternative to burying radioactive power plant fuel at Yucca Mountain.

Despite that fact that there are tens of thousands of tonnes of spent fuel now residing at US commercial nuclear power plants, it should be noted that only 3 or 4% of that spent fuel is actually radioactive waste. After enriched uranium is utilized in a nuclear reactor for fuel, 96% of the remaining mass is in the form of the original fertile uranium 238 with a residual component of fissile uranium 235 composing about 0.83% of the total uranium content. This percentage of uranium 235 is down from its original 3% as fuel, but still higher than the 0.71% natural concentration of uranium. An additional 1% of the spent fuel is in the form of fissile plutonium 239. And the rest is in the form of fission products and minor actinides. Since the uranium and plutonium can be recycled and utilized for fuel, only 3% or 4% of spent fuel can actually be considered as radioactive waste material.

Spent fuel cask stored on site

Spent Fuel Composition

95.6% uranium (0.83% of which is U-235)
2.9% stable fission products
0.9% plutonium (about two thirds fissile plutonium)
0.3% cesium & strontium (fission products)
0.1% iodine and technetium (fission products)
0.1% other long-lived fission products
0.1% minor actinides (americium, curium, neptunium)

So instead of the Federal government using the 30 billion dollars given to them by the utilities to simply throw away the spent fuel, I propose that the Federal government use that money along with additional Federal investment funds to dispose of 96% of the spent fuel by recycling the fissile material and converting it into clean energy.

I propose that a Federal Nuplex Corporation should be established in order to fund the construction of Federal Nuplexes in every State that is currently storing spent fuel at their nuclear power facilities and for every State willing to take in spent fuel from other states.

I envision Federal Nuplex facilities as consisting of:

1. Temporary storage areas for spent fuel cask recently imported from nuclear power facilities within the state

2. On site spent fuel reprocessing facilities to extract uranium and plutonium fuel on site utilization

3. On site uranium enrichment facilities to fabricate uranium fuel for on site reactors

4. 8 to 40 on site nuclear reactors capable of using the recycled uranium and plutonium fuel for base-load electricity production

5. Long term storage cask for housing the reprocessed radioactive spent fuel fission products and minor actinides from nuclear reactors

6. Adjacent site synfuel production facilities for the production of carbon neutral gasoline, methanol, diesel fuel, jet fuel, dimethyl ether, hydrogen, oxygen, and ammonia for the transportation and industrial chemical industry

7. Off site (up to 80 kilometers) methanol-oxygen cogeneration and trigeneration power facilities for the production of peak-load electricity

8. On site storage facilities for radioactive waste from hospitals and radioactive research facilities

A State's spent fuel could be transported by rail to the Federal Nuplex facility located within the state. The residual nuclear waste produced after reprocessing would be stored on site for a few hundred years until either transmutation or final out of state deposition. On site reactors could also be decommissioned on site after energy production from a Nuplex has finally ceased. The safest and most economical way to decommission a reactor facility would be to allow the irradiated components of the facility to decay over the coarse of 100 to 200 years. So if you assume that several reactors would be gradually added to a nuplex over the course of the next 30 or 40 years and that these reactors will continue to operate for at least 60 to 80 years then Nuplex facilities would probably not be completely decommissioned and removed from its site until at least 300 years from now, or not until the 24th century. So any residual radioactive waste could remain on site at secured Nuplex facilities for a few hundred years until the material is eventually transmuted into shorter lived elements or permanently deposited in deep sea beds or in some extraterrestrial environment in the 24th century.

Spent fuel cask being transported by rail

A typical Nuplex could contain perhaps four AP 1000 light water reactors plus four ACR 1000 heavy water reactors. The recycled plutonium and uranium could be used inside of a thorium blanket inside of an ACR reactor to reduce plutonium production while producing more uranium 233. A Heavy Water Reactor utilizing thorium could in theory have an 80% conversion ratio or above almost to the point of being self-sustaining. The AP 1000 Light Water Reactor could use the recycled and enriched uranium to produce power or the plutonium as MOX, or the plutonium in a mixture of a thorium-uranium blanket

Federal Nuplexes would contain between 8 to 40 reactors. Concentrating so many reactors at one site could substantially reduce the capital cost of the power facility due to economies of mass production and large concentrated facilities could also reduced labor and security cost. Each Nuplex would also produce thousands of permanent jobs. But because of the heat island effect, it may be necessary to limit the number of nuclear reactors at a site to ten or less. However, if waste it is dissipated by locating several cooling ponds and dry cooling towers in all directions, several kilometers off site, then this effect could be mitigated. Alternatively, the heat island effect could be mitigated by utilizing the waste heat for seawater desalinization, greenhouse and hydroponic agriculture, or aquaculture.

Because the Federal government would be reprocessing domestic spent fuel on Federally protected facilities, there should be no danger of nuclear proliferation. Additionally, the export of Nuplex produced synfuels to other countries for electric power production, transportation, and industrial chemicals would enable foreign nations to benefit from the production of nuclear energy without the need for nuclear facilities or nuclear material.

Federal Nuplexes would eliminate the need for long term storage of spent fuel at commercial nuclear reactors sites. They would also substantially reduce the volume of spent fuel produced by the commercial nuclear industry while also substantially increasing the amount of nuclear energy produce for base-load electricity and synfuel production. As the Secretary of Energy Steven Chu has already noted, nuclear power plants already produce 100 times less radioactive material than coal power facilities. Nuplexes could furter reduce radwaste production by more than 1000 times relative coal power production. Finally, Federal Nuplexes would allow regional utilities to increase the number of reactors on existing sites without the long term trouble of managing and storing spent fuel.

References and Links

1. Waste Management in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

2. Short & Long Term Solutions for Nuclear Waste

3. Experts Weigh In On How The U.S. Should Handle Its Commercial Nuclear "Waste"

4. Public Power & the Future of Nuclear Energy

5. G. Olah, A. Goeppert, and G. Prakash, (2006) Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy, Wiley-VCH Verlang, Weinheim, Germany

6. Green Freedom: A concept for producing carbon-neutral synthetic fuels and chemicals, Los Alamos Labs, November 2007 F.J. Martin and WL Kubic,

7. Gasoline from Air and Water

8. A Guidebook to Nuclear Reactors: Reactors, Fuel Cycles, The Issues of Nuclear Power
Anthony V. Nero Jr.

9. Nuclear Decommissioning

10. Technology and Policy Instruments for Mitigating the Heat-island Effect

11. Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste

New Papyrus

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Short & Long Term Solutions for Nuclear Waste

by Marcel F. Williams

A typical 1000 MWe nuclear power plant produces about 30 tonnes of highly radioactive spent fuel on an annual basis. However, a coal powered facility of equal capacity produces more than 400,000 tonnes of waste material (ash) annually that contains more than 100 times more radioactive waste (uranium, thorium, radon) than a nuclear power plant.

In fact, all of the spent fuel so far produced in the US could fit into a football field just 10 meters high. And if this fuel was reprocessed, then the volume could be reduced by at least a factor of ten. So you could easily store all nuclear waste material in fortified cask at just one nuclear facility.

Nuclear waste locations within the continental US

But Yucca Mountain is clearly not the long term solution for radioactive waste within the US.

My solution to this problem would be to:

1. To mandate that all radioactive waste material that exist within the geographic territory of a state be kept within that state at environmentally secured federal, state, or private facilities for up to 200 years.

2. I'd allow states that posses radioactive waste to petition the federal government to fund, construct, operate, and secure federal radioactive waste repositories within their states designed to securely house radioactive material for up to 200 years.

3. Alternatively, states could petition the federal government to build a-- nuclear energy park-- within their state to house and reprocess all of their nuclear waste for fuel which could then be utilized on site. A nuclear energy park would consist of 10 to 40 reactors and would be utilized to produce regional electric power, ammonia for agricultural fertilizer and hydrogen for the production of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, and aviation fuel through biomass or through the extraction of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Adding hydrogen to biomass increases the efficiency of synthetic fuel production by 3 to 5 times.

4. After 200 years, the waste would be removed from the state repositories or nuclear parks for final deposition. Final deposition could be extraterrestrial disposal using 23rd century space technology, or deep sea disposal, or disposal on a tiny island.

Of course, much of this radioactive material may be deemed too valuable to throw away a few centuries from now. Who knows, the humans and industries of the 23rd century might even pay big bucks for what 21st century humans use to call nuclear waste:-)

References and Links

1. Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste

2. Radioactive Waste (Wikipedia)

3. Radioactive Waste (US Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

4. Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel (US NRC)

5. Dry Cask Storage (US NRC)

A New Papyrus Publication