Really? If they’re taking decades to cool, then they’re shedding heat for decades, and you ought to be able to use that shedded heat for something.
There is no such thing as a casual use nuclear power source using spent fuel rods.
It’s still highly enriched uranium emitting high doses of ionizing radiation, just below what they would like for optimum reactor operation. Of course it could be used to heat something, but it is still subject to the same safety and security controls as usable fuel rods, which means it gets stored on a secure site with safe handling, or it goes to reprocessing. Let me know when you get that Mr Fusion prototype ready to try.
Casual?
Wut?
Edit: This seems a reasonably clear critique of the idea
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/tilghman1/
In theory, you could take advantage of the remaining heat. In practice, that would mean taking a long time and money to build a new safe mechanism when they just want to forget nuclear exists.
And, apparently, as per the link, it’s not that efficient, so… meh.
Timex
6242
If you want to take advantage of the remaining heat in nuclear fuel… uh… that’s called a nuclear reactor.
That’s literally how they work.
If you have fuel that is spent to the degree it cannot be used to sustain a chain reaction, you reprocess it into new fuel rods. That’s why with modern nuclear techniques, there is virtually no waste.
Per the link I just posted, none of this is true.
KevinC
6245
That’s not true, the link you posted just said that the process is only in a prototype stage and it’s going to be difficult to get the funding to move it to production with public opinion of nuclear being what it is.
I recall @Timex saying these are things we could do with modern reactors, but we’re not doing it because we’re not building modern reactors. My reading of the paper you linked seems to agree in that it’s something we could do but it’s going to be expensive scale it from prototype to production.
The paper did answer my earlier query of why they don’t currently use the waste heat from the spent fuel rods, so thanks for finding and posting that!
Using heat from spent fuel rods isn’t the same thing as a nuclear reaction. We don’t reprocess fuel rods to produce no waste; reprocessing them (per that paper) gets us from 5% to 6% utilization, not 100%.
My pleasure, I was curious about it too.
Timex
6247
Here’s a bunch of information on modern reprocessing techniques for those interested.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/processing-of-used-nuclear-fuel.aspx
Here’s one new technique under development by the US and South Korea.
The KAERI advanced spent fuel conditioning process (ACP) involves separating uranium, transuranics including plutonium, and fission products including lanthanides. It utilises a high-temperature lithium-potassium chloride bath from which uranium is recovered electrolytically to concentrate the actinides, which are then removed together (with some remaining fission products). The latter product is then fabricated into fast reactor fuel without further treatment. The process is intrinsically proliferation-resistant because it is so hot radiologically, and the curium provides a high level of spontaneous neutrons. It recycles over 96% of the used fuel. Development of this process is at the heart of US-South Korean nuclear cooperation, and is central to the renewal of the bilateral US-South Korean nuclear cooperation agreement in March 2014, so is already receiving considerable attention in negotiations.
The reality is that even old reprocessing techniques can be quite effective at reprocessing old fuel rods, because older reactors only use around 5% of the energy stored in the uranium. You can run the fuel through the reprocessing cycle multiple times.
The bigger issue tends to be that it’s simply cheaper to just make new fuel rods, rather than processing old ones, so unless uranium prices are high, it doesn’t make a lot of economical sense from the perspective of the corporations running the plants. Additionally, the reprocessing generally involves separation of plutonium produced during the reaction cycle. Originally, that was actually a chief reason for doing it, as it produced plutonium used in the nuclear weapons program. Nowadays, that plutonium is problematic because you don’t really want it around, as someone could steal it.
Tman
6248
On the good news front, a major steel producer in Germany has succeeded in using Hydrogen in their blast furnaces instead of coal and now is committing to doing all of their blast furnaces by 2023.
I’m sure they have tons of safeguards, but I wonder how much more dangerous it is piping huge quantities of hydrogen into a foundry.
Timex
6251
That belongs in the liberal stupidity thread.
Timex
6252
Where are they getting the hydrogen from?
Tman
6253
Well, from the Air Liquid site - who is supplying the Hydrogen, it appears a mixture of technologies. Definitely heading in the right direction. I was quite shocked to see they are going to be 50% carbon-free by next year.
Air Liquide is committing to increasing by 2020 the percentage of hydrogen produced for these applications from carbon-free processes, i.e. sources that emit no CO2. The Group’s objective is to produce at least 50% of the hydrogen required by hydrogen energy applications from carbon-free energy sources, by combining:
- the reforming of biogas
- the use of renewable energies in water electrolysis
- the technologies to capture and re-use carbon from the CO2 emitted during the production of hydrogen from natural gas
I think Zach Kanter might be joking? Poe’s Law is in full effect here. If you scroll down and read his other tweets it is a heady mess.
Probably not. Conspiracists gonna conspiracize.
The rest of the replies projecting their own tyrannic policy gives it away, too.
Timex
6256
Ok, so it’s just sarcasm? Like Roth suggested, it’s impossible to tell anymore.
KevinC
6257
The paper says upwards of 99%, albeit with the caveats listed (costs of going from prototype to production). I quoted the section in my previous post. 5% to 6% is all we could do with the old reactors in place.
Apologies if we’re talking past each other. I thought Timex was talking about what we could do if we built/invested in be reactors capable of such processing rather than what we can do with existing plants built decades ago. I don’t mean to put words in his mouth, though, and maybe I misunderstood.
