Is Rocketing Nuclear Waste into the Sun a Viable Solution?

[mheslep]

...If the Chinese hadn't invented gunpowder, there'd be no guns. You can't suppress science, so you shouldn't try. Instead, you should try to harness it for good.

Agree one can't suppress individual scientific concepts. But another thought occurs on this subject. I hold it is very possible to suppress the construction of highly complex systems. The know how for such is quite a fragile thing. The US DoD constantly frets that it will lose the ability to execute some old cold war rocket tech, naval sub tech, etc. So even if every scientific principal on subs is publicly available, one can't just look how to build these things up on Wikipedia, even a hypothetical classified version. Creation of highly enriched U. certainly qualifies as a highly complex system.

 

[vanesch]

Lovins proposes:
1. the US can get completely off oil in a couple of decades
2. it can do this without adding any nuclear.
3. Natural gas and CCGT stays in the mix. For the Warmers he throws in reforming the CH4 at the well head and reinserting the CO2 on the spot.

The point is, we can get rid of the natural gas if we keep nuclear. So the end question is: what's better, nuclear or natural gas ? This plan is BTW very similar to some utopic projections of the Green party in the European parliament. In their projections for 2040, they have optimistic estimates of wind, solar, biofuel, and a serious decrease in consumption, and... they increased natural gas consumption by about 50 % to reach 30% of the electricity production. Of course they get rid of nuclear. Well, you have to know that today, Europe has about 30% nuclear. So if they would KEEP nuclear, they'd be entirely fossil-free. Not even seriously expanding it, just keeping it at the current level.
It's always the same: alternatives are *proposed* to replace nuclear, but in practice, it is always fossil fuels. What's best ? Getting rid of nuclear, or getting rid of fossil fuels ?
And the point is, that the proposed solutions are a combination of techniques that haven't even been demonstrated. So in as much as the alternatives don't show satisfaction, that would mean even more natural gas use.
http://www.greens-efa.org/cms/topics/dokbin/155/155777.a_vision_scenario_for_climate_and_energy@en.pdf

As to the CO2 sequestration, it is funny that people do mind the geological sequestration for about 10000 years of small quantities of nuclear waste (a few tens of thousands of tons), which are materials which have great difficulties to get free, but at the same time, they have no difficulties *imagining* the geological sequestration for hundreds of millions of years of billions of tons of gas!

A serious leak in that CO2 repository, and you will kill everybody in an entire region. Now, or 10 000 years from now, or 5 million years from now. The amount of gas is the same. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos for instance.

A repository that is gas-tight for natural gas isn't necessary for CO2, as CO2 can form carbon acid in contact with water, and dissolve certain kinds of rock.

 

[vanesch]

I read that the average Iranian takes some pride their country's 'peaceful' nuclear program. Also, Iran has violated the NPT a couple times; they are in violation now, so one can hardly argue the NPT stops these states.

Iran will get a nuke sooner or later, if it really wants to, whether or not in Europe or the US, there are power plants or not. And guess what ? They won't use it. Should we refuse a solution to a potentially world-threatening situation (I'm talking about the hypothetical or real climate change projected in 100 years), just because some imagined fears of things that never happened, and that will or won't happen, depending on whether some people really want so or not, but independent of whether power plants are build ?

Tell me, if you have the choice, what's worse:

A) A global temperature increase of 6 degrees in 2100, but more political pressure possible to refrain some from making nukes

B) A global temperature increase of 1 degree in 2100, two Chernobyls, and 5 small (0.5 KT-5KT) nuclear terrorist attacks during the 21th century ?

I'm not saying that B is the consequence of nuclear power. B is the *proposed* horror scheme of anti-nuclear activists.

 

[vanesch]

One positive thing about Lovins' report is that he does recognize that nuclear displaces a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions - Helen Caldicott could learn something there. The anti-nuclear movement seems to be buying the notion that the emissions from the construction of the nuclear plant plus the mining and manufacturing of fuel negate the emissions saved by displacing fossil fuel plants. It is an absurd argument, but it is often used.

Indeed, there's a very simple argument to show how silly this is. 1 kg of natural uranium (yellow cake) costs of the order of $ 100,-. According to the report on which Caldicot bases her masterpiece, currently a nuclear powerplant emits 1/6 of an equivalent oil/coal plant for the same amount of energy, while in the future, this will become 1/1 or even higher, because of the petrol used during the mining.

Well, 1 kg of natural uranium produces, today, about the same amount of energy in a LWR as about 10 000 kg of oil. 1/6 of that is, according to this report, used to mine that 1kg. Well, that's 1600 kg of oil, or about 10 barrils at more than $100,- each.

So our uranium mine uses $1000,- of oil just to get out 1 kg of uranium that it sells for ~$100,-.EDIT: I saw that due to market tensions, the price of 1 kg of uranium peaked last year around $200,-, but that's due to market mechanisms, not because of the cost of the production.
Now, the price is ~$130,- per kg, as shown in http://www.uxc.com/review/uxc_Prices.aspx

 

[mheslep]

Iran will get a nuke sooner or later, if it really wants to, whether or not in Europe or the US, there are power plants or not. And guess what ? They won't use it.

Oh, well that's welcome news. No more worries then.

Should we refuse a solution to a potentially world-threatening situation (I'm talking about the hypothetical or real climate change projected in 100 years), just because some imagined fears of things that never happened, and that will or won't happen, depending on whether some people really want so or not, but independent of whether power plants are build ?

Tell me, if you have the choice, what's worse:

A) A global temperature increase of 6 degrees in 2100, but more political pressure possible to refrain some from making nukes

B) A global temperature increase of 1 degree in 2100, two Chernobyls, and 5 small (0.5 KT-5KT) nuclear terrorist attacks during the 21th century ?

I'm not saying that B is the consequence of nuclear power. B is the *proposed* horror scheme of anti-nuclear activists.

I think these risk assessments are totally off the rails. You have taken for granted that Iran can get nuclear weapons (and if they do its probably in the next 10 years), the world can not stop this, and then Iran will not use them? Add to the consequence of an Iranian bomb that Saudi Arabia and others would be highly encouraged to their own bomb, and Israel would likely ramp up their weapons program. At the same time AWG, of which there's never been any demonstrated prediction by the theory, is to be offered as a counter evil sometime around 2100?

 

[vanesch]

I think these risk assessments are totally off the rails. You have taken for granted that Iran can get nuclear weapons (and if they do its probably in the next 10 years), the world can not stop this, and then Iran will not use them? Add to the consequence of an Iranian bomb that Saudi Arabia and others would be highly encouraged to their own bomb, and Israel would likely ramp up their weapons program.

So ? That's exactly what we've witnessed between China, the USA and the Soviet union for more than 40 years. Of the 60 000 or so warheads produced, not one single has ever been used. It's a terrible waste of resources, I agree.

At the same time AWG, of which there's never been any demonstrated prediction by the theory, is to be offered as a counter evil sometime around 2100?

Without the hypothesis of AGW, there's no problem in burning gas of course. Coal is different, it causes as many death PER YEAR as 5 Hiroshima bombs, or as 50 Chernobyls (official numbers: ~10 000 long-term victims) or 1.2 Chernobyls per year (Green party numbers - 400 000 long-term victims) - namely about 500 000 death a year.

In as much as I'm also skeptical of the scientific lack of doubt concerning AGW, one should nevertheless admit that what's proposed is a plausible scenario - much more so than many surrealistic scenarios used by anti-nuclear activists. I find this plausibility more than enough to be cautious with CO2 exhausts - and moreover, as I stated already a few times, in any case we need to seriously diminish our CO2 exhausts if we are to find out the A in AGW.

So in order to *deny the reasonable possibility* of AGW, you have to be VERY SURE that there is no AGW. For sure, there's no scientific proof of that either.

Question: what probabilities do you assign that Iran uses a nuke in the 21st century, and what probability do you assign that AGW turns out to be correct ?

Question 2: how many victims do you expect from the use of an Iranian nuke, and all responses to that ?

Question 3: how many victims do you expect under the hypothesis of AGW, and a rise in temperature of 6 degrees ?

 

[mheslep]

So ? That's exactly what we've witnessed between China, the USA and the Soviet union for more than 40 years. Of the 60 000 or so warheads produced, not one single has ever been used. It's a terrible waste of resources, I agree.

Well two were used. See the Cuban blockade in the in 60's for how very, very close the world came to nuclear war. Castro and Che Guevarra actually encouraged the idea, the maniacs.

Without the hypothesis of AGW, there's no problem in burning gas of course. Coal is different, it causes as many death PER YEAR as 5 Hiroshima bombs, or as 50 Chernobyls (official numbers: ~10 000 long-term victims) or 1.2 Chernobyls per year (Green party numbers - 400 000 long-term victims) - namely about 500 000 death a year.

Yes coal stinks, ought to be gassified I think.

Question: what probabilities do you assign that Iran uses a nuke in the 21st century, and what probability do you assign that AGW turns out to be correct ?

Question 2: how many victims do you expect from the use of an Iranian nuke, and all responses to that ?

Question 3: how many victims do you expect under the hypothesis of AGW, and a rise in temperature of 6 degrees ?

The problem is larger in scope than just Iran. Other countries would feel the Iranian threat and get on board, as illustrated by Pakistan and India. One of the motivations for Hussein's Iraqi nuclear program was to keep parity w/ Iran. It would be no surprise to see Saudi Arabia start a program in the face of an Iranian bomb, an increased program from Israel, and on and on. As to victims: as I understand it many of the victims forecast by AWG are from large economic displacements. I'm skeptical of that, but if that's the standard, then one could say the victims from even a small nuclear detonation in a Western city would be completely horrific. Blast victims aside, that city is economically done for centuries, and the rest of the economy would be temporarily shutdown. Borders closed. Travel stopped. 911 directly cost $500B in losses, I'd expect a bomb to be 10x that. Then somebody is going to retaliate, somewhere, and possibly "totally obliterate" (per Sen. Clinton) the attacker. You might be looking at millions dead before its over.

 

[baywax]

Well two were used. See the Cuban blockade in the in 60's for how very, very close the world came to nuclear war. Castro and Che Guevarra actually encouraged the idea, the maniacs.

Yes coal stinks, ought to be gassified I think.


The problem is larger in scope than just Iran. Other countries would feel the Iranian threat and get on board, as illustrated by Pakistan and India. One of the motivations for Hussein's Iraqi nuclear program was to keep parity w/ Iran. It would be no surprise to see Saudi Arabia start a program in the face of an Iranian bomb, an increased program from Israel, and on and on. As to victims: as I understand it many of the victims forecast by AWG are from large economic displacements. I'm skeptical of that, but if that's the standard, then one could say the victims from even a small nuclear detonation in a Western city would be completely horrific. Blast victims aside, that city is economically done for centuries, and the rest of the economy would be temporarily shutdown. Borders closed. Travel stopped. 911 directly cost $500B in losses, I'd expect a bomb to be 10x that. Then somebody is going to retaliate, somewhere, and possibly "totally obliterate" (per Sen. Clinton) the attacker. You might be looking at millions dead before its over.

Has this discussion come to the point where its thought to be safe to store nuclear material in a warhead?

 

[vanesch]

The problem is larger in scope than just Iran. Other countries would feel the Iranian threat and get on board, as illustrated by Pakistan and India. One of the motivations for Hussein's Iraqi nuclear program was to keep parity w/ Iran. It would be no surprise to see Saudi Arabia start a program in the face of an Iranian bomb, an increased program from Israel, and on and on. As to victims: as I understand it many of the victims forecast by AWG are from large economic displacements. I'm skeptical of that, but if that's the standard, then one could say the victims from even a small nuclear detonation in a Western city would be completely horrific. Blast victims aside, that city is economically done for centuries, and the rest of the economy would be temporarily shutdown. Borders closed. Travel stopped. 911 directly cost $500B in losses, I'd expect a bomb to be 10x that. Then somebody is going to retaliate, somewhere, and possibly "totally obliterate" (per Sen. Clinton) the attacker. You might be looking at millions dead before its over.

It is because you said that the risk assesment was off. Now, of course, this is coarse guessing, I agree.

What you do is: you multiply the assumed number of victims of a certain outcome by the probability of that outcome.

So, say, probability of Iran making a nuke and using it in the 21th century, and this escalating in a regional nuclear conflict: 20%.
Probability of AGW: 60% (that's "undecided, with a slight bias towards yes: after all, there ARE a lot of suggestions that it happens).

Estimated number of victims of a regional nuclear conflict in the ME: say, 100 million people (a few cities, and then other victims, that's what you'd expect of a few hundred Hiroshima bombs, which caused about 100 000 victims each).

Estimated number of victims of AGW: 1 billion (hunger, devastated areas, conflicts...), say about 10% of world population by then (I would think it reasonable to estimate that the 10% poorest will not survive the burden of AGW).

I'm just spouting these numbers, I know. No references, backups or whatever. Just very crude guestimates.

Expected damage for bomb: 0.2 x 100 million = 20 million expected victims.
Expected damage AGW: 0.6 x 1 billion = 600 million expected victims.

 

[Azael]

Certainly a country can import its enriched material; Russia tried to have the Iranians abandon their program and import from Russia instead. Iran refused. Iran continues with its enrichment program and it still grabs a great deal of political cover by telling the world that its program is for power, and more importantly it can tell its own population the same thing. I read that the average Iranian takes some pride their country's 'peaceful' nuclear program. Also, Iran has violated the NPT a couple times; they are in violation now, so one can hardly argue the NPT stops these states.

And that's why I think the NPT should be modified so that not any country that has signed has the right to build enrichment plants.

That analogy is fairly wide of the target, gas stations and napalm are both down stream from widely distributed sources - the wells. Enrichment requires big technology and big money so its a choke point for nuclear - power or bomb.

Well enrichment isn't neccesarly a choke point for either. You could still run as many CANDU reactors as you want for power, producing weapons grade plutonium could be done in a primitive graphite moderated reactors(like the Hanford B-Reactor) running on natural uranium.

The problem IMO is that if a nation decides they want nukes they can build them no matter what you or I say. The presence of civilian nuclear power plants in or outside the country makes hardly no difference at all. Would Iran stop enrichment if europe and america in unison decided to dismantle their nuclear power plants?

 

[mheslep]

Well enrichment isn't neccesarly a choke point for either. You could still run as many CANDU reactors as you want for power, producing weapons grade plutonium could be done in a primitive graphite moderated reactors(like the Hanford B-Reactor) running on natural uranium.

A Plutonium implosion weapon is a much more difficult thing to design than a U235 device.

The problem IMO is that if a nation decides they want nukes they can build them no matter what you or I say.

I will by no means acquiesce to that, nor I hope will US policy. A nation can not hide the vast infrastructure and power required to enrich. It can be attacked, if the NPT and nothing else works.

The presence of civilian nuclear power plants in or outside the country makes hardly no difference at all. Would Iran stop enrichment if Europe and America in unison decided to dismantle their nuclear power plants?

Its not the reactor per say, its the presence of the enrichment infrastructure that makes a huge difference. I hold that the expertise and equipment required for enrichment has a half life of sorts, so that to stop Iran one would have had to go back a couple decades. If you stop Pakistan and A Q Khan, then yes Iran might be several decades behind where they are now; they might have considered do it yourself enrichment impractical.

Going forward, the world wide cutoff of enrichment tech. might very well stop the next rogue - a Saudi Arabia, an Egypt, a Syria from getting started; and a N. Korea from improving on its duds.

 

[mheslep]

...As to the CO2 sequestration, it is funny that people do mind the geological sequestration for about 10000 years of small quantities of nuclear waste (a few tens of thousands of tons), which are materials which have great difficulties to get free, but at the same time, they have no difficulties *imagining* the geological sequestration for hundreds of millions of years of billions of tons of gas!

A serious leak in that CO2 repository, and you will kill everybody in an entire region. Now, or 10 000 years from now, or 5 million years from now. The amount of gas is the same. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos for instance.

A repository that is gas-tight for natural gas isn't necessary for CO2, as CO2 can form carbon acid in contact with water, and dissolve certain kinds of rock.

I think that's not a fair comparison. Nyos is a crater lake so the CO2 was thus trapped and caused the deaths via suffocation. Though the planned sequestration is of large scale, Oil&Gas companies have been injecting CO2 for years into wells to boost production and I've never heard of suffocation deaths resulting. AFAIK the danger is from a very localized pressure explosion, unless someone chooses a very poor sequestration location.

 

[Azael]

A Plutonium implosion weapon is a much more difficult thing to design than a U235 device.

Yes but producing plutonium is much simpler than enrichening uranium and a plutonium producing reactor can be more easily hidden than a enrichment plant.

I will by no means acquiesce to that, nor I hope will US policy. A nation can not hide the vast infrastructure and power required to enrich. It can be attacked, if the NPT and nothing else works.

Well take sweden as a perfect example. We more or less had all the infrastructur needed in the 60's to make plutonium based nuclear weapons if we wanted to until a descision was made not to build bombs. The swedish nuclear power inspectorate estimates that by 1965 we where 1-2 years away from beeing able to serial produce nuclear weapons(not just build one) if the decision for it had been made.

If a small country like sweden could manage that in the 60's without anyone knowing about it a larger country with more resources can surely do it more easily today. Beliving anything else seems reckless.

Its not the reactor per say, its the presence of the enrichment infrastructure that makes a huge difference. I hold that the expertise and equipment required for enrichment has a half life of sorts, so that to stop Iran one would have had to go back a couple decades. If you stop Pakistan and A Q Khan, then yes Iran might be several decades behind where they are now; they might have considered do it yourself enrichment impractical.

And then perhaps Iran would have decided to produce plutonium instead. How would you stop that?

Going forward, the world wide cutoff of enrichment tech. might very well stop the next rogue - a Saudi Arabia, an Egypt, a Syria from getting started; and a N. Korea from improving on its duds.

Only if you assume enrichment is the one and only way to produce nukes, which it isnt. The only way to handle the problem is politicaly, change the NPT and enforce it fiercly. Right now the NPT is a toothless tiger and that is the main problem, not the existence of civilian nuclear power and the associated technology.

 

[baywax]

In other words, the Soviets wanted to store their nuclear material in the US (in the form of nuclear warheads) and the US wanted to store theirs in the USSR and now the Iranians want to store theirs in Israel while Israel will surely want to do the same. India and Pakistan want to trade nuclear materials, North Korea wants to do so with pretty well everybody and China is probably itching for an excuse to test their nuclear waste deployment system.

 

[russ_watters]

That piece just says Harris was late because of 'delays' and therefore over budget; it does not say the delays were caused be hippie legal challenges though it may well be that they were. Are you just assuming the delay cause or do you have other information?

Yes, that piece didn't actually break down the reason for the long timeline/cost overruns. But it's a pretty well-documented/understood issue. I guess I kinda took it for granted that you knew about it. The thing is, I guess, the Hippies were repsonsible for it, but they wouldn't want to take credit for it because that would imply that their work was a problem, not a solution. In any case, here's an article about it:

Regulatory Ratcheting

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission Office of Regulation, as parts of the United States Government, must be responsive to public concern. Starting in the early 1970s, the public grew concerned about the safety of nuclear power plants: the NRC therefore responded in the only way it could, by tightening regulations and requirements for safety equipment...

In addition to increasing the quantity of materials and labor going into a plant, regulatory ratcheting increased costs by extending the time required for construction. According to the United Engineers estimates, the time from project initiation to ground breaking5 was 16 months in 1967, 32 months in 1972, and 54 months in 1980. These are the periods needed to do initial engineering and design; to develop a safety analysis and an environmental impact analysis supported by field data; to have these analyses reviewed by the NRC staff and its Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and to work out conflicts with these groups; to subject the analyzed to criticism in public hearings and to respond to that criticism (sometimes with design changes); and finally, to receive a construction permit. The time from ground breaking to operation testing was increased from 42 months in 1967, to 54 months in 1972, to 70 months in 1980.

The increase in total construction time, indicated in Fig. 2, from 7 years in 1971 to 12 years in 1980 roughly doubled the final cost of plants. In addition, the EEDB, corrected for inflation, approximately doubled during that time period. Thus, regulatory ratcheting, quite aside from the effects of inflation, quadrupled the cost of a nuclear power plant. [emphasis added[

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html

What is worse than the "delays" themselves is that the regulations were a moving target, so it was impossible to pin down a real construction timeline/budget before starting the project. With the hippies doing anything they could (and largely succeeding) to delay/block/bog down nuclear projects via this "concern", the financial risks became too high and too difficult to quantify to be worth trying to deal with.

 

[russ_watters]

On Proliferation:

The President has stated nuclear weapons in rogue hands are a (the?) major threat to the US. My earlier point was commercial nuclear power allows other countries to camouflage weapons programs. I mentioned Pakistan. If one could go back 20 years and stop worldwide any new nuclear power, you stop A. Q. Khan and without him you stop, or help to stop, N. Korea, Libya, and Iranian nuclear programs to which he was an important contributor. -Not that I would have stopped it w/out replacing with something else.
Anyone can put together a U235 bomb. The trick is getting the U235 which takes a country sized apparatus to produce. AFAICT, most of the technology for power grade enrichment and weapons grade is identical. That is why I say I see no good way to separate the two - power and bomb.

Ok, for a start, just so we can agree on something: The US, up until last year, was the world leader in CO2 production. Nuclear power already exists in the US and can fix that problem. What happens outside the US is a completely separate question and utterly irrelevant to whether the US should build 300 more nuclear plants. Do you agree with this? And if so, what this means is that for developed nations (and for a few developing nations), the proliferation issue is also irrelevant. And if I had to guess, the countries for which the proliferation issue is irrelevant cover 95% of the world's power demand.

That's a repeat of vanesch's earlier point that got lost. The point is that the relevance factor of the proliferation issue is very, very low here.

Now, for what other countries are doing with nuclear power: Yes, I would have liked to prevent Pakistan from getting nukes. How would that have been possible and how is that relevant today? Going forrward, why can't we simply insist on enforcement of the NPT? We're doing a good job of preventing Iraq and Iran from getting nukes, for example.

 

[vanesch]

Well take sweden as a perfect example. We more or less had all the infrastructur needed in the 60's to make plutonium based nuclear weapons if we wanted to until a descision was made not to build bombs. The swedish nuclear power inspectorate estimates that by 1965 we where 1-2 years away from beeing able to serial produce nuclear weapons(not just build one) if the decision for it had been made.

If a small country like sweden could manage that in the 60's without anyone knowing about it a larger country with more resources can surely do it more easily today. Beliving anything else seems reckless.

That's also what I think. Several times, people have made the erroneous assumption that by "not using a technology themselves" others wouldn't, either. That's like the Carter policy. In fact, the Carter policy turned out to be counter-productive, because in 4th-generation fast reactors, you don't need enrichment. So if fast reactors wouldn't have been held back, we could now probably close down enrichment all together. But Carter's fear was the Purex process. Too bad, others did it. The Purex process is well-known by now. It's chemistry!

Plutonium weapons are harder to make, even if you have the plutonium. Especially with power-reactor-grade plutonium. But it is not impossible, the US did some experiments that way in the 60ies. But the yield of the weapons is low, and the probability to have a dud is high.

There are other ways to do isotope separation, which do not require factories the size of half a town. There is mass spectrometry. It is slow, for sure. But it requires only a modest installation and after a few years, you can accumulate enough U-235 to make one bomb.

Maybe one day someone will put laser isotope separation to work: in that case, I guess a tabletop equipment will do the thing!

All this has nothing to do with the existence of civil nuclear reactors in other countries.

Only if you assume enrichment is the one and only way to produce nukes, which it isnt. The only way to handle the problem is politicaly, change the NPT and enforce it fiercly. Right now the NPT is a toothless tiger and that is the main problem, not the existence of civilian nuclear power and the associated technology.

I don't even consider other countries having nukes a serious problem. For exactly the same reason as it has been for the last 50 years. The only nukes that have been used was when only 1 country had them, and wasn't affraid or retalliation. Since the Soviets had them, none has been used anymore. It's a good thing that several countries in the ME have nukes (and not just 1).

Of course, terrorists having nukes is a different matter, and this might sooner or later happen. Although this will have a serious impact, it is not the end of the world. And it will be independent of whether other countries use power reactors or not.

Nukes are a physical possibility. They are allowed by the laws of mother nature. One cannot stop others from applying the laws of mother nature. It is silly to stop oneself of solving one's own problems, just based on the idle hope that this will stop others from doing other things with the knowledge.

 

[vanesch]

I think that's not a fair comparison. Nyos is a crater lake so the CO2 was thus trapped and caused the deaths via suffocation. Though the planned sequestration is of large scale, Oil&Gas companies have been injecting CO2 for years into wells to boost production and I've never heard of suffocation deaths resulting. AFAIK the danger is from a very localized pressure explosion, unless someone chooses a very poor sequestration location.

I like the difference in "risk assessment" between the supposed nuclear risks ("agree that it is not totally impossible that one could think that...") and non-nuclear risks ("one did something similar already, and it didn't went wrong then, so why should it ?").

What the example of the lake shows, is that upon a serious CO2 release, you can kill a lot of people - in fact many more so, than if you have a serious release of radioactive waste. If CO2 sequestration is to be somewhat useful, one must put an amount of CO2 away which is of the order of what one injects today in the atmosphere, right ? If we are going to put away only 1% of our current exhausts, no need to bother, right ?

So we are talking about a sequestration of billions of tons of CO2 a year, so over a century, this is hundreds of billions of tons that have been sequestrated. What can guarantee you that a fraction of this (say, 1%) will not be released 10 000 years from now ? (where did we hear such a question already ?) The Nyos lake contained 90 million tons of CO2, and the catastrophic release was less than 2 million tons of CO2. We are talking here about extremely small quantities compared to what we are planning to do.

Again, I'm not saying it is impossible. But the risk involved in CO2 sequestration over long term is way way way bigger than the risk involved in radioactive waste storage. It doesn't go away with time.

So anybody coming up with an argument against nuclear waste disposal (that it is not unthinkable that a fraction of it gets into the biosphere 10 000 years from now and slightly contaminates an aquifer) should respond to the argument that a few million tons of CO2 released suddenly can kill an entire region instantaneously, as was already naturally demonstrated.

The same people who use Chernobyl as an argument that the potentiality exists that a reactor releases a serious fraction of its content (without specifying HOW this is going to come about - just that the potential exists) and that this can be harmful, and hence that we shouldn't build such dangerous devices, should also consider that the potential exists for a CO2 sequestration and that a serious fraction of its content is suddenly released, which can also be harmful (without specifying HOW this is going to come about - just that the potential exists).

This is what comes back over and over: people hold somehow nuclear technology to totally different standards than all other activities.

The same holds for nuclear weapons. The direct use of civil nuclear technology in country A has not much DIRECT incidence on the desire and technological infrastructure of country B to make nuclear weapons: it is very difficult to STEAL the material, it is even more difficult to smuggle it outside without anybody noticing, and it is not going to be very useful. The only link that exists is that the technology used in country A for civil use could be modified in country B to help it make nuclear weapons.

But the same can be said of medical and pharmaceutical research! Technologies to treat virusses to produce certain pharmaceutical materials could also be used to devise extremely dangerous pathogens. Should we ban all pharmaceutical research using virusses then, simply because of the potential danger that in some country, or by some terrorist group, this technology is diverted into making a weapon of mass destruction ?

 

[Phy6explorer]

What about planting huge groups of trees around the CO2 emitting places wouldn't that help?

 

[vanesch]

What about planting huge groups of trees around the CO2 emitting places wouldn't that help?

You can place them anywhere in the world: CO2 is global. The trees don't have to be near the emitting places. Yes, reforestration would be part of the solution. However, once you have a mature forest, there is not much more extra sequestration by it: what is captured by photosynthesis is released by decomposition. It is the growing of a new forest which can capture CO2. So one would have to have a constant rate of setting up new forests to compensate for fossil fuel exhausts. Sooner or later, all habitable land will have to be converted into forests. And after that, this technique won't capture any more CO2 than it emits itself (except for the small part that gets burried in the soil, and might turn into fossil fuels in a few tens of millions of years...).

This is what is usually put in the balance of "ground usage change".

 

[mheslep]

Ok, for a start, just so we can agree on something: The US, up until last year, was the world leader in CO2 production. Nuclear power already exists in the US and can fix that problem. What happens outside the US is a completely separate question and utterly irrelevant to whether the US should build 300 more nuclear plants. Do you agree with this? And if so, what this means is that for developed nations (and for a few developing nations), the proliferation issue is also irrelevant. And if I had to guess, the countries for which the proliferation issue is irrelevant cover 95% of the world's power demand.

That's a repeat of vanesch's earlier point that got lost. The point is that the relevance factor of the proliferation issue is very, very low here.

Yes, agreed, I have no problem with a theoretically isolated US or most any other developed country internally growing its nuclear power capability from the standpoint of non proliferation. The problem is that the US is not isolated nor are theses other countries. The French for instance were building nuclear capability around the the Middle East. And politically, the issue is that becomes intractable to have ~300 nuclear plants, mine Uranium over seas, and then tell the developing rogues they can't have any enrichment capability.

Now, for what other countries are doing with nuclear power: Yes, I would have liked to prevent Pakistan from getting nukes. How would that have been possible and how is that relevant today? Going forrward, why can't we simply insist on enforcement of the NPT? We're doing a good job of preventing Iraq and Iran from getting nukes, for example.

Iran? Looks to me like they're full speed ahead w/ enrichment. Sanctions having little effect.

 

[vanesch]

Iran? Looks to me like they're full speed ahead w/ enrichment. Sanctions having little effect.

http://www.cfr.org/publication/7876/laser_enrichment.html

We should now also stop all laser applications worldwide, given that lasers can be used to enrichment. This has nothing to do with nuclear power, btw.

So, again, it is *futile* to bring down an entire industry, with clear unique advantages, just for the sake of trying to avoid someone making weapons.

You're not going to argue that we now have to have a moratorium on laser technology, and that as such, there will be a "half time of knowledge" for it to disappear, and bring people in a state not to be able anymore to build a laser, right ?

 

[mheslep]

http://www.cfr.org/publication/7876/laser_enrichment.html

Thank you for the link

We should now also stop all laser applications worldwide, given that lasers can be used to enrichment. This has nothing to do with nuclear power, btw.

So, again, it is *futile* to bring down an entire industry, with clear unique advantages, just for the sake of trying to avoid someone making weapons.

You're not going to argue that we now have to have a moratorium on laser technology, and that as such, there will be a "half time of knowledge" for it to disappear, and bring people in a state not to be able anymore to build a laser, right ?

Composition fallacy. Knowledge of laser technology in general does not give one the ability separate useful amounts of isotopes. Laser separation makes my point: knowledge of the physical theory is of little threat, a trained physicist could sit down, read up and grasp the basic theory in an afternoon. The knowledge of how to build out a practical system, that is a large and complex system, apparently can not be gained after 27 years and $2B:

Scientists need tens of kilograms of enriched uranium, more than 100,000 times the amount enriched, to make a weapon,
...
The United States was on the verge of commercialization, when USEC, then known as the U.S. Enrichment Corporation, decided in June 1999 to cancel its atomic vapor laser isotope separation (AVLIS) program. This came as a surprise considering USEC had spent roughly $100 million on AVLIS since being privatized a year earlier. In total, the U.S. AVLIS program involved 27 years of research and development and an investment of some $2 billion. USEC's cost estimates to make AVLIS ready for commercialization, which soared into the hundreds of millions of dollars, were a major factor in the program's cancellation.

So ship all the lasers you want, no one in Iran is going to start separating enough isotopes to make weapons with the current state of the art. However, sink another couple billion into AVLIS commercialization, work out all the kinks in the current system, start making that particular laser tech widely available, spin up several 1000 engineers around the world on the subject including a few who propose proliferation is irrelevant ala "https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1717902&postcount=153""; voila, you no doubt will have Iranian laser isotope separation.

 

[mheslep]

...So we are talking about a sequestration of billions of tons of CO2 a year, so over a century, this is hundreds of billions of tons that have been sequestrated. What can guarantee you that a fraction of this (say, 1%) will not be released 10 000 years from now ? (where did we hear such a question already ?) The Nyos lake contained 90 million tons of CO2, and the catastrophic release was less than 2 million tons of CO2. We are talking here about extremely small quantities compared to what we are planning to do.

No plans I know of propose placing all of world wide sequestered CO2 in one hole. As I said above, the idea is to reinsert at the well head, so chemically you simply put back in one mole of CO2 for every mole of CH4 taken out, so 10^4 - 10^5(?) kg per well per year. There's a some danger there but I believe you are way off on the scale. I also believe the concern is more along the lines of a slow leak that simply allows the CO2 to re-agitate the AGW problem sequestration was supposed to prevent. The other issue is cost. So those are the three cons of sequestration: small explosive leak dangers, slow leaks, and cost. Its not comparable in any way to nuclear catastrophes. And I would have to check my geochemistry, but I'm guessing CO2 left underground for 10ky is very much not going to be in the same form as when originally placed there, waiting for a bone head on a back hoe (BHOBH) to blow the cap.

 

[mheslep]

Here's the dance I would like to see stopped. From a quick, lazy Wiki reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan

A Q Khan was educated at Delft in the Netherlands and Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium where he in 1972 received his PhD and

joined the staff of the Physical Dynamics Research Laboratory (FDO) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. FDO was a subcontractor for URENCO, the uranium enrichment facility at Almelo in the Netherlands, which had been established in 1970 by the United Kingdom, West Germany, and the Netherlands to assure a supply of enriched uranium for the European nuclear reactors. The URENCO facility used Zippe-type centrifuge technology to separate the fissionable isotope uranium-235 out of uranium hexafluoride gas by spinning a mixture of the two isotopes at up to 100,000 revolutions a minute. The technical details of these centrifuge systems are regulated as secret information by export controls because they could be used for the purposes of nuclear proliferation. These technical details along with blue prints of centrifuge were clandestinely 'taken' by A Q Khan and were

Khan did not need to go to Delfts and Leuven to understand the physics of fission and neutron diffusion, he could sit in Karachi and read up; agreed there is no need nor use in attempting to put that back in the bottle. He could not sit in Karachi and dream up a massive enrichment program.

Hence the motivation for my arguments above. Take away the intimate access of Khan or those like him to advanced Western enrichment technology and you have a strong argument that today there would still be no Pakistani bomb, similarly no N. Korean bomb, similarly the Iranian program would be set back or non existent.

 

[Azael]

Hence the motivation for my arguments above. Take away the intimate access of Khan or those like him to advanced Western enrichment technology and you have a strong argument that today there would still be no Pakistani bomb, similarly no N. Korean bomb, similarly the Iranian program would be set back or non existent.

Do you have any reason to assume they would not take the plutonium route to bombs instead if Khan hadnt spread enrichment technology? North koreas bomb was suposedly a plutonium bomb(hence why it fizzled). North koreas magnox reactors are fueled by natural uranium, they did pursue enrichment technology but it doesn't seem like it has played any major part in the weapons program.

Assuming that getting rid of enrichment technology would stop proliferation seems a bit naive and like vanesch pointed out, gas centrifuges and gas diffusion isn't the only ways to enrichment. Some of the uranium for the little boy was produced in caultrons and Iraq was planning on erichening uranium with caultrons.

Considering how accelerator technology is advancing its not entirely unrealistic that spallation sources can in the future be used to produce extremely pure Pu-239 or u-233 for that matter, yet another way to get ahold of weapons grade material that is totaly disconnected from civilian nuclear power.

It all comes down to one thing, a sufficiently determined nation can always find some way to produce weapons grade material. Looks like every nation so far that has tried to get nuclear weapons has succeded.

I also believe the concern is more along the lines of a slow leak that simply allows the CO2 to re-agitate the AGW problem sequestration was supposed to prevent. The other issue is cost. So those are the three cons of sequestration: small explosive leak dangers, slow leaks, and cost. Its not comparable in any way to nuclear catastrophes.

Not even the worst case scenario for a nuclear waste repository failure is much to worry about considering the chemical properties of the actinides. Not much if any will move from the repository even if the canisters fail and leak.

 

[engineroom]

One thing with N proliferation (power or weapons) is that country A might have a nice (read western friendly) stable government today so they are "permitted" to build these facilities however what happens in the future if there was a coup?

I'm not as worried about Iran having N power or even N weapons as I am with the fact that Israel does. I think a small mircle that during the first gulf war when Saddam was launching Skuds at Israel that Israel didn't launch a Nuke back.

Any way back to the original post; The only way to have safe storage of N waste is not bury and forget. Ongoing monitoring of the containment is required. When necessary the containment will need replaced and the N waste repacked. However as the N waste gets older the containment does not need to be as severe but you are talking centries rather than decades I beleive. This is a very long time scale problem. The long term hope is that an affordable technology will be devolped for the safe distruction of the N waste

 

[vanesch]

So ship all the lasers you want, no one in Iran is going to start separating enough isotopes to make weapons with the current state of the art.

That's not what this report says:
http://www.iranwatch.org/privateviews/First Watch/perspex-fwi-Laser.pdf

Visibly shipping powerful copper vapor lasers or NdYag lasers is all they need...

EDIT: also, remember that one single centrifuge or diffusion unit can also only produce "milligrams" of highly enriched material. The point is: once you know how to produce "milligrams" with a bit more than a table top setup, it is no difficulty to produce kilograms when money and ressources are affected. Iran *already* obtained milligrams of enriched uranium with LIS.

The reasons why the AVLIS program was canceled after billions of $ of investment, and at a few hundred million $ of commercial realisation, remain a mystery - I even wonder if they weren't motivated to drop it, exactly because of proliferation issues. But the planned AVLIS plant needed to separate hundreds of tons of uranium at commercially competitive rates. This is a different requirement than to make a few kilogram of material with "unlimited" ressources and no commercial pressure for a weapons program.

 

[vanesch]

No plans I know of propose placing all of world wide sequestered CO2 in one hole.

Nor is one going to put all of the worlds nuclear waste in one hole... But that doesn't increase safety. Instead of having probability p of having a catastrophe with N victims, you now have probability m x p of having a catastrophe of N/ m victims, although that last N/m is not even sure. The average number of victims over long times remains the same, so the associated risk is the same, whether you put everything in one place, or distributed over different places, as long as the number of victims is proportional with the quantity stored. But this last thing is mostly not the case. Usually, the number of victims doesn't rise linearly with the quantity stored. In that case, spreading the waste over different repositories (be it CO2 or nuclear waste) will actually increase the risk.

As I said above, the idea is to reinsert at the well head, so chemically you simply put back in one mole of CO2 for every mole of CH4 taken out, so 10^4 - 10^5(?) kg per well per year.

So this is distributed then over 10^7-10^8 wellheads ? (in order to put away the few billion ton CO2 we have to put away a year globally)

There's a some danger there but I believe you are way off on the scale. I also believe the concern is more along the lines of a slow leak that simply allows the CO2 to re-agitate the AGW problem sequestration was supposed to prevent.

Sure, that's one thing. But concerning nuclear waste, would you be satisfied with the phrase "there is some danger there but I believe you are way off on the scale" ?

What tells you that you can be absolutely sure that 1 million years from now, the stored gas is not going to be released suddenly, when a future civilisation will drill large holes into it ?
(this is the kind of questions that one asks for nuclear waste repositories).

The other issue is cost. So those are the three cons of sequestration: small explosive leak dangers, slow leaks, and cost. Its not comparable in any way to nuclear catastrophes. And I would have to check my geochemistry, but I'm guessing CO2 left underground for 10ky is very much not going to be in the same form as when originally placed there, waiting for a bone head on a back hoe (BHOBH) to blow the cap.

10000 years from now, the nuclear waste is essentially gone - at least its radio-toxicity. The CO2 will still be there, although a part of it might be absorbed by ground water, in which case it becomes carbonic acid, which can dissolve some rock formations (and hence "blow the cap"). After all, that was the idea! If it wouldn't be there anymore, where would it be ? The methane that was there, remained there for millions of years. If the CO2 interacts with the rocky material, that means that it transforms it chemically, and that would mean that it changes the repository. The other thing it can do, is dissolve in ground water, which is not immediately an advantage, because that means it can migrate, accumulate somewhere else, get released...

I only wanted to point out that one holds nuclear stuff, for an irrational reason, to totally different standards as other kinds of materials. One requires a much higher safety proposal (in projected number of victims) than one requires for other technologies, and one uses worst-case scenarios as "proof" against nuclear activities, while one uses "common knowledge" for other activities.

The probability for massive CO2 release by a repository is probably very low. But so is the probability for a massive release by a nuclear reactor or for a waste repository (even much more so, given its finite lifetime). The number of victims in both cases is comparable (so it is not true that the "nuclear catastrophe" would be worse than the CO2 catastrophe - we've been over this already several times, but even a terrible accident like Chernobyl is not any worse than any average industrial catastrophe or even routine activity: 60 direct dead, probably some 10000 victims of polution over the 50 years after it - compare that to the YEARLY 24000 victims in the US alone by coal fired plants).

The kind of risk assessment for nuclear somehow must have a thousand to a million fold higher quality than for other activities, at equal danger (number of victims). Why is this ?

 

[vanesch]

I'm not as worried about Iran having N power or even N weapons as I am with the fact that Israel does. I think a small mircle that during the first gulf war when Saddam was launching Skuds at Israel that Israel didn't launch a Nuke back.

A country having nukes will, IMO, never use them, because of fear of retaliation. The "need for a nuke" is based upon 2 other reasons: self-protection (especially from an enemy having nukes), and "international weight".

The danger of a country giving nukes to a terrorist group is also not to be over-estimated: they will still be responsible for it. So I think the real danger of someone using nukes is pretty small, and will yield in expected yearly number of victims over a century, probably much less than the number of victims we already have from cars and coal-fired powerplants (1.2 million and 500 000 per year, which means about 170 million over a century).

EDIT: that doesn't mean that one shouldn't fight proliferation by all means. But the main way of avoiding proliferation is by international and political pressure: to make the balance of a country flip over to the side where NOT making a nuke is more interesting than making a nuke.

This deviates from nuclear engineering, and goes into political science, but why does Iran want a nuke ? Why did Pakistan want a nuke ? Why does N. Korea want a nuke ? Why did Israel build a nuke ? Mainly for self-protection - and also for regional domination.
Pakistan needed a nuke because its ennemi, India, had made some. Iran needed a nuke to protect itself first from Iraq, and later from a similar invasion as Iraq suffered. It would also help Iran to become a major regional power. N. Korea's dictator needs a nuke to stabilise itself, to get rid from Chinese influence. Israel needed nukes because it is bathing in a region of hostility. In all these cases, nukes are nothing else but some ultimate "nation guarantee". If Iraq would have had nukes, I think the US wouldn't have invaded it.
As to "rogue states", I have a hard time imagining roguer states than the USSR under Stalin, or China under Mao. They had tons of very heavy nukes. Nothing happened.

So in as much as it is a good thing to try to convince nations not to build nukes, one mustn't over-dramatize it either.

I remain convinced that any reasonably develloped country with enough financial means can, if it wants to, build a nuke in the coming decades. Maybe it won't be able to hide its intentions.

Any way back to the original post; The only way to have safe storage of N waste is not bury and forget. Ongoing monitoring of the containment is required.

I don't know where you get that claim from. It would actually be riskier to leave access to the canisters, than to close the access geologically. It will take more than a thousand years (and probably much more so) for the canisters to leak. With reprocessed and vitrified waste, moreover the glass has to dissolve. Really, what can physically be released from a repository is a very very small pollution, mostly hundreds of times below the background radiation. The ultimate containment are not the canisters, but rather the geology. That's a "very big canister".