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The Energy Spectator
A Wasted Opportunity
Outlining his positions on energy last week, Secretary -designate Steven Chu listed three technologies that "would be nice to have, but are not ready for use, either because they are too expensive to be practical, or not demonstrated to be safe."
They were: 1) sequestering the carbon dioxide from power plants; 2) making ethanol from cellulose; and 3) recycling nuclear fuel to reduce its volume and recover unused fuel.
Well, he's right about the carbon sequestering and cellulose. And two out of three ain't bad.
Carbon sequestering may never be ready for prime time. Robert Socolow, head of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton, has calculated that it would take "an oil field six times the size of the smallest of what the industry calls 'giant fields,' of which some 500 exist," to accommodate the average coal plant.
Moreover, carbon dioxide is not a friendly substance. At 15 percent of the atmosphere it is lethal. Underground repositories would have to be stored at high pressure and an accidental escape would be disastrous. CO2 is heavier than air and would settle on the earth's surface, possibly killing thousands. No one has even thought of the insurance aspects yet.
Ethanol made from cellulose -- the woody and non-edible portions of a plant -- is one of those futuristic technologies that keep receding over the horizon. Bacteria are required to break cellulose into sugars that can be fermented. Those bacteria thrive in the stomachs of cows and termites but have never been cultivated on an industrial scale. Numerous experimenters are trying, but no one is even sure that it can be done.
But how does nuclear reprocessing make the list? If nuclear recycling is "too expensive to be practical" and "not proven to be safe," then Steven Chu must be the present King of France.
The French have been reprocessing nuclear fuel since the 1970s -- about the time we gave it up. The French now recycle all the spent fuel from their 65 reactors -- which provides them with 75 percent of their electricity. They do it so well they are also recycling for other countries. They are even buying enriched uranium from old Soviet weapons stocks, "blending it down" with uranium mine tailings (another "waste" product) and selling it to us as reactor fuel. Although few people seem to realize it, one out of every ten light bulbs in America is now powered by a former Soviet weapon.
By the time the French are finished reprocessing, they have nothing of what we would call "nuclear waste." A small amount of highly radioactive material remains. It could be processed into industrial and medical isotopes, but it does not make economic sense right now. So the French put it into storage. All their "nuclear waste" from thirty years of producing 75 percent of their electricity is kept beneath the floor of one large room at Le Havre.
How did the French get so far ahead of us? In the 1970s they realized they had no other choice. "We don't have oil but we have ideas," was the slogan with which they sold the public. (Our implicit slogan, by contrast, was "We don't have ideas but we have plenty of coal.") Once you commit to nuclear, reprocessing makes perfect sense. After the first "burn," almost half the potential energy in a fuel rod still remains. "One-third of our electric power now comes from recycled fuel rods," says Jacques Besnainou, head of Areva's American operations. "We call spent fuel 'the new uranium mines.'"
Besides yielding more energy, spent fuel is also a source of valuable medical and industrial isotopes. Forty percent of all medical procedures now use radioactive tracers and it's a $10 billion business -- except we import 100 percent of our medical isotopes from Canada. All our material is headed for Yucca Mountain.
In one respect, however, Chu is correct. It is probably too late and too expensive to initiate our own reprocessing effort here. France is far ahead of us and it will be much cheaper to import the technology. Areva, the French nuclear company, is already building a $2 billion uranium enrichment plant in Idaho Falls and a $350 million manufacturing facility for nuclear components in partnership with Northrop Grumman at Newport News. It is also reviving the Barnwell, South Carolina facility -- originally abandoned by the Carter Administration -- that will turn surplus plutonium from the weapons program into "mixed oxide" fuel that can power nuclear reactors.
Yes, Mr. Secretary-designate, nuclear reprocessing is alive and well. It just isn't an American technology anymore. But that's what comes from being phobic about all things nuclear.
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Jason| 1.20.09 @ 6:31AM
Yet another example of how the radical green left is holding America back.
http://www.rightklik.net/
John W.| 1.20.09 @ 8:57AM
Win one, lose one. At least we're building a reprocessing facility in the U.S. And he's not an ideological imbecile, like Waxman or Browner.
John V.| 1.20.09 @ 9:40AM
Unfortunately, we have been held back as a nation because of minority thinking leftists who do not want this country to accel and progress. Not only has our nuclear program been stifled by these fools but our industry and technology has been given away and it has not been allowed to function and progress to the point it needs. Now we are paying the price of years of this type of thinking and caving into anti-progressional slugs. We now have to rely on foreign countries for everything from clothing to fuels to food to technology, its time we become self sufficient again and stop giving away our money,industry, trade, and technology to other countries.
Wee Willie| 1.20.09 @ 10:53AM
“There is nothing new under the sun.” Experts in all fields are one or two decades removed from new important research. As such, experts seem to throw old chestnuts at each other. A significant addition to the energy of America is a melding of the power of the atom with the power of the sun.
Wood captures the power of the sun. 40% of city waste is paper and paper products. Some 30% of all hardwood harvested is used to make pallets which have a very limited life span. Some plants grow rapidly and are easily harvested. Fall leaves and windfalls of trees are readily available cellulose sources.
Therefore, one should use the waste heat of nuclear plants which is now converted to useless steam to start the process of anaerobic heat destruction of cellulose and other organic materials. Some primary nuclear heat would need to be bled off to complete the process. Heating cellulose leads to CO (which can be converted to ethanol by bacteria), methanol, ethanol, and finally cellulose can be converted to biodiesel by the Fischer-Tropsch process. These are old established processes that need to be specifically engineered to disposal of bioorganic garbage that is now collected and buried.
This would not solve our energy problems but my guess it would produce more useful energy than solar and wind combined.
William M. Selenke
Cincinnati, OH
ddd| 1.20.09 @ 10:56AM
You don't want to catch up, you want to get ahead. Build plants, breeder reactors, that reprocess continuously such as molten salt reactors. That way the problems and hazards of a reprocessing facility are avoided
Marc Jeric| 1.20.09 @ 11:55AM
Carter killed the Clinch River breeder reactor, then he killed nuclear power by nominating to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a Sierra Club general counsel and the Massachussetts condsumer advocate. What mischief that moron caused! Now, if we ever want to revive nuclear power plant we would have to hire French and South Korean engineers, since all our engineers have retired or died out. Factory equipment for production of reactors and vessels was scrapped years ago; specialty welders have retired; special steel for nuclear components would have to be imported from Japan; etc., etc.
Alan Brooks| 1.20.09 @ 12:43PM
and Jimmuh will be wearing his crap eatin' grin at the White House.
for eight years! cripes.
Joe B| 1.20.09 @ 2:46PM
Rather than thinking like a scientist, Steven Chu fudges the facts and analysis to please his political masters. A Nobel laureate he may be but he lacks the integrity of a Feynman. Let's all ignore him shall we?
R Alvarez| 1.20.09 @ 5:39PM
After reading this piece, a few facts are in order:
* The French have not recycled all of the spent fuel from its nuclear power plants. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2007,
France has recycled about 10% of the total amount of uranium extracted by reprocessing.
* According to the International Energy Agency, less than 2 percent of the uranium used in French power reactors, come from its reprocessing operation.
* As for plutonium, France experienced major failures in its "breeder" reactor program, and has had to reuse plutonium in it's existing power reactors, by mixing it with uranium (MOX). After being used once in a reactor, less than 20%of the plutonium is "burned up." After being used once, the French have chosen not to reprocess MOX spent fuel, which is substantially more expenesive to dispose.
* The reprocessing plant at La Hague generates High-level radioactive wastes that will require deep geological disposal. It's important to note that more than 99% of the radioactivity in spent fuel is in these wastes. Decay heat and toxicity are the controlling factors for disposalof these wastes, not volume. France has just beginning to search for a geological repository for these wastes.
* The capital costs for the reproocessing operations at La Hague were $20 billion. Operation al costs are $1 billion per year, which adds substainally to the costs of electricity.
* The foreign client base for the French reprocessing industry is effectively drying up.
Alan Brooks| 1.20.09 @ 7:34PM
after three mile island Jimmuh got all righteous.
Alan Brooks| 1.20.09 @ 7:39PM
but Sweden is 50 percent nuclear and Finland is building a new reactor.
not us, though.
billschumdlap| 1.20.09 @ 10:19PM
So, our Secretary designate doesn't even know that nuclear fuel can be recycled? Next thing you know we'll be hearing that our Sec of the Treasury doesn't pay his taxes!
cdc| 1.21.09 @ 12:50AM
Chu's acttual thoughts on the matter are rather different than what was reported. But everyone here knows how biased the media can be.
Steven Chu: Yes. Again, in the long term, recycling can be a part of that solution. Right now, even though France has been recycling, Japan is starting to recycle, Great Britain is now beginning to look at this. I think, from my limited knowledge about that, that the processes we have are not ideal. There’s an urge to increase the proliferation resistance of recycling. This dates back to the days of the Carter Administration where he said the United States will go once through recycling, once through the fuel cycle in order to decrease the chance of nuclear proliferation. Now we’re in a different place and time. There are other countries doing recycling. And so the idea here is now to do it in a way that makes it more proliferation resistant. And there’s an economic feasibility issue. This is actually, in my mind, a research problem at the moment and something that the department should be paying a lot of attention to. I think there’s time to look at it and develop means, but certainly recycling is an option that we will be looking at very closely.
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2009/01/steven-chu-energy-secretary.html
Robert Moen| 1.21.09 @ 2:21AM
Mr. Tucker,
I'm just finishing up your book, TERRESTRIAL ENERGY. ...great stuff.
Barbara| 1.21.09 @ 4:47PM
Not oft mentioned is the fact that the French nuclear program was built on the shoulders of American technology - through technical assistance and patent license agreements (exclusively Westinghouse pressurized water reactor technology). While with W, I predicted that the day would come when we'd be taking out licenses with the French, a comment considered heretical at the time. They were moving ahead with reprocessing and breeder reactors at a much faster pace than we were. This is a problem we can lay at the feet of both our antinukes and government.
As an aside, back in the early 1980s, we predicted a serious accident in Russia due to their basic design flaws (backup systems practically nonexistent, and no sufficient containment buildings). Also, Three Mile Island is spoken of in such frightening terms; the reality is that reporters flying from the West Coast received more radiation during their flight (natural background) than they did standing next to the buildings at TMI reporting on the incident.
chuck wickersham| 1.22.09 @ 5:30PM
Dear Mr. Tucker, I agree with much of what you say, but am perplexed by one assertion you make. "Moreover, carbon dioxide is not a friendly substance. At 15 percent of the atmosphere it is lethal." Is what I have read, that carbon dioxide represents approximatly 385 parts per million of the earth's atmosphere, or less that 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present, incorrect? Your clarification of this issue would be greatly appreciated. As you must admit, the difference between 15 % and 1/400ths of 1 percent is significant.
Trackback| 1.24.09 @ 6:52PM
The American Spectator : A Wasted Opportunity, on french 75, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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anonymous| 2.25.09 @ 12:11PM
not true. The french are pouring liquid nuclear waste into the British channel
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