Experts are trying to come up with the best way to warn Earth's future inhabitants — whether 10,000 or 100,000 years from now — what precisely lies under their feet.
Some countries successfully dismantle the remnants of the rods. Residues are extracted from spent nuclear fuel and rods are made not on uranium but on plutonium. The remmans of this rods is even more enriched than before reaktor starting work. as a result, it is possible to burn unenriched uranium and other heavy nuclei, so that the fuel will definitely last for a long time.
“[Nuclear] is costly, potentially dangerous, that there are problems dealing with and siting waste, and that future generations are
left with a legacy they will not appreciate. …uranium is itself a non-renewable resource, due to run out well before the end of this century. So even if it were to be cost-effective, safe, and harmless to future generations, nuclear energy is not a long-term solution to humanity’s energy problems.”
Dobson, Andrew, (2000) GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT, United Kingdom: Taylor and Francis (Books) Limited, pp.56
Standard green party retoric, they don’t see the forest for the trees.
If we had built nuclear power plants and closed coal, oil and gas power plants back in 2000 we would have several nations with a carbon free grid these days.
Oh, if only the reactors worked exclusively on uranium. Of course, I can quote Rosatom’s articles, but unfortunately they are only in Russian. A closed fuel cycle was developed there back in 2015. If you want you can use Google translate: https://habr.com/ru/articles/388533/
P.S. It is very specific to get scientific knowledge from a book called GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT
Thanks, I’ll check it out, Google Translate usually works well on links.
Edit: tried reading it, got about half of it. How long is this closed-loop supposed to last until it is all spent? I didn’t see mentions of that, just about uranium no longer being an issue.
I quoted that as I’m currently reading through it as part of my master’s and it seemed particularly relevant. Dobson looks at different aspects from different perspectives, not taking particular sides. The quote above is from the ‘greens’ perspective; Dobson mentions the possibility of future technological advances.
At the beginning of the article, it is mentioned that only the use of uranium-238, which is now not used, will expand the reserves of nuclear fuel by about 200 times.
UPD: also in another article I read that not all uranium is completely destroyed in the reactor cycle, the rest turns into radioactive waste, which in a few years can be cooled and recycled into new rods for the reactor. in France, for example, they have been doing this for a long time. Here: https://habr.com/ru/articles/588877/
And the amount of uranium available would only get us through to the end of the century.
Some countries successfully dismantle the remnants of the rods. Residues are extracted from spent nuclear fuel and rods are made not on uranium but on plutonium. The remmans of this rods is even more enriched than before reaktor starting work. as a result, it is possible to burn unenriched uranium and other heavy nuclei, so that the fuel will definitely last for a long time.
“[Nuclear] is costly, potentially dangerous, that there are problems dealing with and siting waste, and that future generations are left with a legacy they will not appreciate. …uranium is itself a non-renewable resource, due to run out well before the end of this century. So even if it were to be cost-effective, safe, and harmless to future generations, nuclear energy is not a long-term solution to humanity’s energy problems.”
Dobson, Andrew, (2000) GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT, United Kingdom: Taylor and Francis (Books) Limited, pp.56
Standard green party retoric, they don’t see the forest for the trees.
If we had built nuclear power plants and closed coal, oil and gas power plants back in 2000 we would have several nations with a carbon free grid these days.
Oh, if only the reactors worked exclusively on uranium. Of course, I can quote Rosatom’s articles, but unfortunately they are only in Russian. A closed fuel cycle was developed there back in 2015. If you want you can use Google translate: https://habr.com/ru/articles/388533/
P.S. It is very specific to get scientific knowledge from a book called GREEN POLITICAL THOUGHT
Thanks, I’ll check it out, Google Translate usually works well on links.
Edit: tried reading it, got about half of it. How long is this closed-loop supposed to last until it is all spent? I didn’t see mentions of that, just about uranium no longer being an issue.
I quoted that as I’m currently reading through it as part of my master’s and it seemed particularly relevant. Dobson looks at different aspects from different perspectives, not taking particular sides. The quote above is from the ‘greens’ perspective; Dobson mentions the possibility of future technological advances.
At the beginning of the article, it is mentioned that only the use of uranium-238, which is now not used, will expand the reserves of nuclear fuel by about 200 times.
UPD: also in another article I read that not all uranium is completely destroyed in the reactor cycle, the rest turns into radioactive waste, which in a few years can be cooled and recycled into new rods for the reactor. in France, for example, they have been doing this for a long time. Here: https://habr.com/ru/articles/588877/