The question of reactor safety is an essential one if fission is to move forward. Just by what I have read, in places like Lawrence Berkeley Labs, MIT, Japanese labs, South Korea, etc, the fixes might work, but the cost-price of these fixes tends to kill interest by public and private utilities. I also had followed the Russian work with Lead moderated and lead-bismuth reactors. It may end up being a game changer. I have also pondered why not use atmospheric nitrogen as a moderator-coolant for fission reactors? There were the old Magnox reactors that the UK made in the late 50's and 1960's that occasionally made their presence known in a couple of ancient Dr. Who episodes (Pertwee or Baker) which used CO2 as a coolant moderator. Why not use environmentally, safer, and abundant atmospheric nitrogen instead? I think the toxicity of radio nitrogen lasts under one second, as a feature of physics. Costs, again, are likely the reason. Too costly to develop, I suppose, and low RO!.
You could well be right about gas being a bubble (pun?). However, the tricks the petroleum engineers can do seem to be endless. One area of continued troubles for Green-minded is the possibility that in a decade or three, enhanced oil recovery becomes economic (unlikely today) and that methane gas hydrates (which are a phenomenally large resource) comes to the forefront, technically. This is why I am big on spending whatever it takes for storage for solar and wind, which as far as I can see is the only bottleneck in the way of solar and wind becoming the dominant fuel resource. If storage can be improved the forecasts you cited will be conservative in their estimate of progress. I would take natural gas from shale, enhanced recovery, or gas hydrates, only because it may be the only thing available for civilization. It's a very, pessimistic view, but then so is purchasing AAA insurance in case one's car breaks down on the highway. -----Original Message----- From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 3:35 pm Subject: RE: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia I have been following the publicly available information on development of the various GenIV breeder variants. Am curious as to how much actual progress the Russians may have made in pursuing this one particular form – using molten lead as the heat transfer fluid (which is why they have such a high thermal efficiency at 43%). It may surprise some, but I am not opposed to the idea of nuclear power per se; though I do oppose systems that depend on active safety features in order to prevent a core meltdown… and I do have reasonable concerns about how waste products will be contained in sequestered facilities (or for some materials potentially getting re-processed getting burnt up in breeders) The natural gas uptick in availability is a short duration bubble, resulting from highly capital, water and energy intensive production techniques that is squeezing out small marginal pockets of available fossil energy from a containing oil/gas bearing shale rock formation. I would not count on this long term – already there is a massive capital flight from this sector (that preceded the recent collapse in the global spot prices). Solar PV will continue to grow: For example, GlobalData, a well-known sector forecasting company that publishes forecasts on a wide variety of industry sectors and trends, published figures that show a trend line indicating that PV module capacity will grow from the current base of 135.66 GW installed by 2013 to 413.98 GW in 2020, based on a number of factors, including volume trends, average price, and production share. In another forecast, by this same information company, they estimate that investment in the global wind energy sector will rise to above $100 billion, driving up installed wind capacity from the current global figure of 364.9 Gigawatts (GW) in 2014 to 650.8 GW by 2020. This yields, a cumulative installed capacity for solar PV + wind of over a Terawatt by 2020. This does not include figures for CSP (concentrated solar thermal power) either, which is significant in some areas (California, Nevada, Spain)… and may (or may not) grow. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2015 9:55 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia I have literally monitored developments for years that would return some form of nuclear fission as a safe possibility to be the main power source for the human species. It always sounds interestingly, and innovative, but never takes off to become a reality. Thorium, Molten Salt, Micro, Betavoltaic, subcritical reactors which switch off when a laser or proton beam stop, all the wonderful ideas, and more. But these things never leave the laboratory. I will not argue why this is true, or that its a total shame that it never takes off. I think at this late date, fusion, a different process, will wait till the 22nd century, and for the next 85 years its going to be natural gas (argue about this later) or solar and wind. Electric cars power by solar and wind, factories, homes, and the rest of the slack taken up by natural gas. Tesla and Prius will eventually lead the way in transportation. Yes, this view is disappointing, but true. -----Original Message----- From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <[email protected]> To: everything-list <[email protected]> Sent: Sat, Apr 4, 2015 12:26 am Subject: RE: Fast moves for nuclear development in Siberia Has anybody been following this. Looks like the lead cooled fast breeder design is being carried ahead in Russia. An experimental lead-cooled nuclear reactor will be built at the Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC). If successful, the small BREST-300 unit could be the first of a new wave of Russian fast reactors. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN_Fast_moves_for_nuclear_development_in_Siberia_0410121.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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