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U.S. reenters the nuclear fuel game

357 points by beefman 3y ago

photochemsyn 3y ago
The opening sentence is rather inaccurate: "The 93 currently active nuclear-power reactors in the United States burn about 2,000 tonnes of uranium fuel each year." Isn't not 'burnt' by any reasonable interpretation of the word, what happens is that the fuel becomes too hot to handle in any of today's working reactors because of the buildup of radioactive fission products as well as transuranic species. If the fuel rods were left in the reactor, they'd probably swell and eventually block circulation of the primary coolant, and the high radioactive flux would have other negative effects on the reactor core material itself (as well as on any workers that had to fix the mess). This is well known and many proposals have been made to recover this energy from the 'spent' 'burnt' fuel rods, but it's mostly been an expensive mess. Reprocessing to recover the transuranics for use in MOX (plutonium-based fuel, basically) is really expensive as well as generating large amounts of highly toxic waste as well as raising the plutonium-nuclear-weapon proliferation issue. Instead, this 2000 tons per year represents an ever-increasing long-term headache that generally has to be stored onsight for about a decade at the nuclear power plant before it can be transferred to long-term dry cask storage, all at considerable expense and with high security costs. With costs for solar/wind/storage dropping every year, isn't it time to give up on this pipe dream?
- prpl 3y ago
  IAEA even used the word burn to denote a nuclear process. Just because it doesn’t meet your definition doesn’t mean it’s not colloquially used within the field
- HPsquared 3y ago
  2000 tons per year for the whole country though. 20 tons per reactor per year doesn't sound too bad. Compare to the approx 1 billion tons of oil consumption per year, or 4 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year that the rest of the economy burns through, to get a sense of relative scale.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    > 20 tons per reactor per year doesn't sound too bad. Not great, not terrible :) It is super radioactive for centuries though. We really really need to get the long-term storage worked out.
    - peter422 3y ago
      The CO2 released by fossil fuels also can have century spanning impacts.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      > We really really need to get the long-term storage worked out. We did. And there's $52+ billion in the Nuclear Waste Fund. Nevada is just really good at complaining.
      - acidburnNSA 3y ago
        Exactly. We have the money and technology to build and operate repositories that responsibly handle all our nuclear waste. We just need the willpower to go out and do it.
        eru 3y ago
        Or just give some other country money to do it for you? Finland might do it? (They are also sophisticated and stable enough, that you don't need to worry about the fuel being mishandled. At least not any more than for the US.)
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Yeah just put it in your own back yard then and see how you feel about it :)
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      Radioactive, yes. "Super" radioactive, no. Longer half-life -> less radioactive, by definition. Infinite half-life -> not radioactive at all.
- M3L0NM4N 3y ago
  Are you saying nuclear is a pipe dream or reprocessing?
- gustavus 3y ago
  > With costs for solar/wind/storage dropping every year, isn't it time to give up on this pipe dream? When will we give up the pipedream that it's always going to be sunny and windy, especially as climate change continues to exacerbate destructive weather patterns. And when will we give up the pipedream that everywhere in the world is sunny and windy all the time to.
  - rgmerk 3y ago
    The question is whether one or more of the seasonal storage technologies on the horizon, when combined with the seasonal storage we already have (conventional hydropower with big honking dams) turns out to give a cheaper electricity system cost than nuclear in a given location. Also worth pointing out that a large fraction of the world’s population lives in places where seasonal storage is not nearly as much of a problem. Seasonal storage is much more of an issue for cool temperate and subarctic zones in the northern hemisphere, where maximum energy demand and minimum solar energy supply occur at the same time. Several billion people across South Asia, south-east Asia, most of South America, Oceania, and most of Africa don’t have this unfortunate misalignment.
    - ekianjo 3y ago
      People dont deem to realize that dams are super expensive, dont last forever and can cause cataclismic failures when they break. Stuff that is much worse that nuclear failures. And lets not talk about the destruction of human and animal habitat to make dams in the first place...
      - rgmerk 3y ago
        True, but we already have quite a lot of them, and we’re not going to remove them all immediately.
        lazide 3y ago
        Most places already have built dams where there is any significant economic value. The only big new ones tend to be in newly developing areas. So not much opportunity to expand there.
- deleted 3y ago
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- Manuel_D 3y ago
  "burnt" is a pretty intuitive way of saying the usable energy in the fuel is released. It's a nuclear reaction, not a chemical reaction like combustion, but it's a pretty descriptive term that's also used inside of the nuclear industry itself (I heard a talk from a nuclear engineer about rotating fuel rods to achieve an "even burn", in his own words). Storage remains a big barrier to wide-scale deployment of intermittent power sources in a manner truly independent of a fossil fuel grid. While costs may be dropping, scale and competition with electric vehicles means grid storage isn't growing all that quickly. Many solar plants that are employing storage are only installing 2-4 hours worth of storage, which isn't sufficient to even out the duck curve let alone seasonal variations. Wind also has big swings in seasonal production. Even with significant overproduction, most grids are still looking at several days worth of storage to account for a string a cloudy or less-windy days. Another factor is that wind and solar have significantly different output depending on geography and weather. Nuclear's only geographic requirement is a source of water for cooling - and that doesn't have to be potable water, it can be salt water or wastewater. And since human beings need water, too, this is rarely an impediment to deploying nuclear power plants near the population centers that use the most power. By contrast, wind and solar often need to be produced hundreds of miles away from population centers. This tends to overload the transmission capacity of rural power infrastructure [1], sometimes halting wind and solar projects. 1. https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-energy-high-voltage-transmission-lines https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-ene...
  - photochemsyn 3y ago
    I'd go with 'transmutation' - 'burn' is simply used to imply that using uranium is no different than using wood/oil/coal/gas as a fuel, but that's completely unscientific. Burning implies an redox process at the very least, involving an electron acceptor like oxygen mixed with an electron donor like a hydrocarbon and resulting in the destruction of some molecules and the creation of other molecules (e.g. CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O). It's just yet another example of how the nuclear industry tries to spin its activies as safe and harmless. They probably spend as much money on PR these days as they do on R & D.
    - 3y ago
- irfwashere 3y ago
  I highly recommend Doomberg's substack for energy related analysis. His article "Angels on a Pin" explains how storing nuclear waste is not as scary as people make it out to be. Direct link here: https://doomberg.substack.com/p/angels-on-a-pin https://doomberg.substack.com/p/angels-on-a-pin
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    Congress (verbally) fried GM because stories like that hurt the car industry unless people believe they are being dealt with, not because 100 deaths is a large number.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > Isn't not 'burnt' by any reasonable interpretation of the word It actually is. Spent nuclear fuel goes from 3-5% of U-235 at the start to 0.3% at the end of the fuel campaign. There will also be some fissile plutonium, but not much. Having just 1/10-th of initial fuel left definitely qualifies as "burnt". That's also why reprocessing isn't economical right now. You just won't get that much new fuel. > If the fuel rods were left in the reactor, they'd probably swell That can't physically happen. Nuclear fuel is made of tablets of sintered oxide powders, and they are permeable to gases (helium is the main one produced as a result of fission).
- deleted 3y ago
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- necheffa 3y ago
  > Isn't not 'burnt' by any reasonable interpretation of the word FYI, this is a pretty typical industry term. Even to the point where "burn up" is a unit of measure tracked at operation and within model predictions.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > With costs for solar/wind/storage dropping every year, isn't it time to give up on this pipe dream? There is no beating the energy density of uranium.
  - eru 3y ago
    Well, but the power plant you need to unlock that energy is pretty big.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  Didn't France have a plant specifically for this? And real waste was vitrified to store with less headaches? Anyway, too bad we have too few breeding reactors
windows2020 3y ago
It seems so clear that nuclear is our ultimate energy source. We're wasting so much time on toy windmills and solar panels, and all the batteries required to compensate. There's so many complaints about cost overruns, etc. OK... let's figure it out! Let's put more focus into this and make safe, efficient and clean nuclear happen! This article indicates we're moving closer to that.
- afterburner 3y ago
  > let's figure it out Renewables already figured it out. They're already cheaper. Nuclear already lost. Until next-gen nuclear is developed, it's over. They're welcome to keep researching it though. Meanwhile, renewables are also getting better, and much faster. And they're already better than nuclear.
  - barney54 3y ago
    Riding a bike is cheaper than driving. Driving a car is dead.
    - beretguy 3y ago
      Unless you are in USA because we like to live each in a separate house instead of apartment complex.
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        I'd want a separate house, too, if my neighbors are Americans.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      China produces more power from renewables than the entire generation capacity of the UK. You can build more firm generation capacity with solar and batteries than a typical nuclear generator, in a year, at a cheaper price. Hell of a bike. Nuclear has a niche, but it got steamrolled by the S curve of solar, wind, and batteries.
cameron_b 3y ago
An important detail to go with the statement that we rely on Russia for most of our nuclear fuel is that the market for nuclear fuel was disrupted for ten years by the Megatons to Megawatts program [0] Centrus, the company cited in the ieee article, was the US based side of that exchange, then under the name of the US Enrichment Corporation. [1] While the program was successful at nuclear disarmament ( to the tune of 20,008 warheads [wiki] ) it tanked the market by effectively 'dumping' the fuel, driving centrifuge operators out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program [1] https://www.centrusenergy.com/who-we-are/history/megatons-to-megawatts/ https://www.centrusenergy.com/who-we-are/history/megatons-to...
- irjustin 3y ago
  I argue: it goes back further than that - Chernobyl and 3-mile island[0]. Deeply ingrained in the collective psyche that nuclear - when it goes wrong goes _really_ wrong. That really set the tone for where US was willing to go and even if it's overall a better solution people weren't willing to back it while it was too easy to kill politically. Jack Welch's book "Straight from the Gut" talks about how they shifted their entire business to nuclear servicing from development because they saw the changing winds - the correct bet. I'm super excited by this latest development as we accept that we need to learn how to tame the beast that is nuclear fission because the benefits really do outweigh the drawbacks. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
  - Civitello 3y ago
    I believe that a significant part of the reason the nuclear is so unpopular is due to the influence of the Simpsons.
    - lazide 3y ago
      Nuclear had PR issues long before the first episode of the simpsons.
    - 3y ago
scythe 3y ago
>However, the type of uranium fuel those reactors use is not going to cut it for the advanced reactors expected to go on line in the coming years If you're like me, you read this sentence and thought: "hey, wasn't that canceled last week?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199061 But apparently that was NuScale's reactor that was canceled, while TerraPower is still going, which may have something to do with the exceptional wealth of its founder: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bill-gates-future-nuclear-energy-ai/story?id=99160110 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bill-gates-future-nuclear-... And they seem to have found a way to get even more billionaire bucks: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-gates-warren-buffett-new-nuclear-reactor-wyoming-natrium https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-gates-w... There's a "hero we deserve" meme hiding in here somewhere...
legulere 3y ago
Another unwanted dependency on Russia is the finished fuel for Russian reactor designs. Luckily a lot of countries start to go to Westinghouse to let them produce an alternative, but as far as I see it’s only for one nuclear reactor design (VVER-440)
- necheffa 3y ago
  Westinghouse also supports VVER-1000 too. https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Portals/0/operating%20plant%20services/fuel/Westinghouse%20reprint%20VVER%20Fuel%20NEI.pdf?ver=2018-05-16-150206-040 https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Portals/0/operating%20pl...
- konart 3y ago
  At the same time Russia is building new plants in Turkey, India, Hungary, Egypt, China, Iran and Bangladesh.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And that is actually a good thing, at least as far as climate change is concerned. In the West, it is about existing power plants and energy mixes. In those developing countries tjose nuclear plants actually replace yet-to-be-built coal and other fossil fuel plants. If they are finished fast enough, that is. And operated safely.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    A bold move, especially for Hungary. Not sure that plant will ever be finished.
demondemidi 3y ago
We have 93 nuclear reactors? I'm on Team Greta: go nukes.
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  Yes, and they make roughly 20% of our electricity, and about 50% of our low-carbon electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  Where are you going to get the uranium ore from to run this project? Where are the high-grade uranium ores that can be economically processed into the required ~200 tons of rods that each 1 GW nuclear power plant requires each year? Let's say we have 0.1% uranium ore, that means we need 1000 tons of ore for each ton of uranium. Huge energy costs, huge waste stream to get that one ton of uranium, by the way. And each 1 GW reactor needs 200 tons - per year. So that's 200,000 tons of ore per year. Now, in comparison, a 1 GW coal-fired power plant needs to be fed with 3-4 million tons of coal per year (energy content of coal varies a bit, in relation to oxygen-based combustion at least). And, a 1 GW reliable 24/7 solar/wind/storage system needs how many tons per year? (OK battery replacement is an issue... work it out yourself).
  - d4mi3n 3y ago
    Pebble bed reactors are thing. Thorium reactors are a thing. The tech has improved even if the active reactors have not.
    - bumby 3y ago
      Tbf, I think the commenter was responding in the context of the 93 existing reactors previously mentioned.
  - doublespanner 3y ago
    The highest yield current mining and enriching processes beat that by about a factor of 10; there are a few sites globally that achieve that, Canada would be the most relevant. Don't forget that only the high density fuel needs to be shipped long distance as well... For a fully reliable 1gw of wind, that's something like 600 turbines (to simply), each turbine lasts about 20 years, and weighs about 200 tonnes. So about 5000 tonnes of finished wind turbine a year, with an equivalent waste stream.
Horffupolde 3y ago
Reënters
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Wow, I think you got flagged for a spelling suggestion.
daguava 3y ago
[dead]
resolutebat 3y ago
> The company is on track to produce 20 kilograms of HALEU by the end of the year, and then expects to produce 900 kg in 2024 > Centrus and the Russian state-owned company Tenex, which are the only two outfits that can produce HALEU in the world > For now, the DOE intends to purchase about 25 tonnes of HALEU per year to kick-start the industry and give HALEU producers secure contracts from which they can expand production So in 2024 the DoE will buy 0.9T from the only American producer, and the remaining 24.1T from Russia?
- wew_vlad 3y ago
  [flagged]
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  I assume it goes it again in 2025?
- ben7799 3y ago
  Did the article imply we buy any from Russia at all? The existing reactors don't use this fuel. This fuel is being ramped up for new reactors that haven't been built yet.
Cypher 3y ago
I'm sure the greens aren't happy about this. They want wind and solar
rlt 3y ago
> The company is on track to produce 20 kilograms of HALEU by the end of the year, and then expects to produce 900 kg in 2024 > 3 tablespoons of HALEU can supply a lifetime’s worth of power for the average U.S. consumer So if I did my math right[1], 20 kg is enough for 1867 U.S. consumers for one year, and 900 kg is enough for 84,000 U.S. consumers? It's a start, I guess. 1. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=20+kg+%2F+%28%283+tablespoons%29+*+%28density+of+uranium%29+%2F+%28US+life+expectancy%29+*+1+year%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=20+kg+%2F+%28%283+table...
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Lifetime of 85,000 people isn’t that bad. You have 79 years in that calc. That’s 6,700,000 for one year. There only 16 states with populations greater than that. IDK. Seems decent. If we wanted better we should have started 50 years ago. Although now is good too.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rlt 3y ago
    I don't think that's right. I multiplied by average lifespan in my original calculation. 3 tbsp of Uranium is about 0.85 kg. 900 kg / 0.85 kg = 1060 US consumer lifetimes worth of energy. Multiply by 79 (average lifespan) and you get 83,740 US consumer years worth of energy.
- deleted 3y ago
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spullara 3y ago
Being dependent on an enemy for weapons is as stupid as being dependent on an enemy for food like they are.
- romeo88 3y ago
  Dependence is mostly no final decision. The cost and lead time for independence is important in strategic considerations.
Animats 3y ago
Sigh. No, the US hasn't been out of the "nuclear fuel game". There are commercial separation plants, including URENCO in Nevada. That fuels existing reactors and new conventional designs such as the AP-1000. This press release is about "high-assay, low-enriched uranium", which isn't used by many reactors yet. If any. NuScale was going to use this stuff. But that project was cancelled a few weeks ago. Costs too much. There are advanced reactors being talked about. Does anyone know of any that actually need this fuel right now? Maybe outside the US there are some. (NRC: "Natural uranium is made of about 0.7 % U-235 and traditional reactor fuel is enriched to between 3% and 5% U-235." High-assay, low-enriched uranium is, per the NRC, 5% - 20% u-235. Weapons grade is around 90%.)
- preisschild 3y ago
  Normal Light Water reactors could also use HALEU, which would improve the economics, due to less fuel refueling outages. TerraPower (the one where Bill Gates is one of the co-founders) is also planning to use HALEU in this decade to fuel their Natrium reactor.
  - credit_guy 3y ago
    > Normal Light Water reactors could also use HALEU, which would improve the economics, due to less fuel refueling outages. Not really. Most reactors in the US produce power about 90% of the time. Reducing the refueling time can increase that to 95%, but that's not going to make a big difference in the profitability of the plant.
- manonthewall 3y ago
  Trillions on military, not even 100 billion for a manhattan style project to come up with a better fission design that would solve all of our energy problems as well as global warming. Until we have battery densities 10X-20X what we have now solar and wind will always be second tier power sources to traditional and nuclear
- credit_guy 3y ago
  > NuScale was going to use this stuff. No, NuScale's reactor will use 4.95% enriched Uranium [1]. [1] https://www.nuscalepower.com/-/media/nuscale/pdf/fact-sheets/smr-fact-sheet.pdf https://www.nuscalepower.com/-/media/nuscale/pdf/fact-sheets...
dvh 3y ago
I was pro-nuclear up until ZPP happened. In order to make nuclear safe you would need to know the future and where the frontlines will be which is impossible. Just in my country there are 2 NPP that will be directly on the frontline when Hungary invades us.
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  Is this a joke ? From the provided information I can see that you are Slovakian. Why would Hungary invade Slovakia ? Because the Little War happened in 1939 ?
  - dvh 3y ago
    This july Orban said in Romania he considers Slovakia to be land forcibly separated from Hungary (https://spectator.sme.sk/c/23197964/viktor-orban-slovakia-romania.html https://spectator.sme.sk/c/23197964/viktor-orban-slovakia-ro...). Here is Orban with map of Hungary on his scarf that includes Slovakia: https://www.startitup.sk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/fidesz-orban-mapa-velkeho-uhorska-900x505.jpeg https://www.startitup.sk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/fidesz-o... and with current pro-russian slovak government it is not impossible to imagine Slovakia leaving NATO. Then all it takes is one false flag operation and Orban can invade. Orban's Hungary is the same as Putin's Russia. They need external enemy to hold power.
    - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
      This is just populist fanfare. Hungary does not have the strength to invade a NATO member. They are not Turkey or Russia. > Orban's Hungary is the same as Putin's Russia yeah except 15 times smaller and with a military that does not compare.
      - dvh 3y ago
        > Hungary does not have the strength to invade a NATO member. So it seems the only way to make Hungary invade Slovakia is to make Slovakia leave NATO. We'll see.
konart 3y ago
Also: https://www.eurasiantimes.com/nuclear-champions-us-lags-behind-russia-china/ https://www.eurasiantimes.com/nuclear-champions-us-lags-behi...
LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago
Why no CANDU? No can do because NIH? Canada commies much?
- credit_guy 3y ago
  CANDU are fine reactors, but the US uses pressurized water reactors (64) and boiling water reactors (31), which are better. Why? Reactors have various feedback loops, some positive, some negative. You want negative feedback loops rather than positive ones. One of the main feedback loops in water cooled reactors is negative in PWRs and BWRs and positive in CANDU reactors. That doesn't mean CANDU reactors are not usable, but PWRs and BWRs are inherently safer.

357 points by beefman 3y ago

The opening sentence is rather inaccurate: "The 93 currently active nuclear-power reactors in the United States burn about 2,000 tonnes of uranium fuel each year." Isn't not 'burnt' by any reasonable interpretation of the word, what happens is that the fuel becomes too hot to handle in any of today's working reactors because of the buildup of radioactive fission products as well as transuranic species. If the fuel rods were left in the reactor, they'd probably swell and eventually block circulation of the primary coolant, and the high radioactive flux would have other negative effects on the reactor core material itself (as well as on any workers that had to fix the mess). This is well known and many proposals have been made to recover this energy from the 'spent' 'burnt' fuel rods, but it's mostly been an expensive mess. Reprocessing to recover the transuranics for use in MOX (plutonium-based fuel, basically) is really expensive as well as generating large amounts of highly toxic waste as well as raising the plutonium-nuclear-weapon proliferation issue. Instead, this 2000 tons per year represents an ever-increasing long-term headache that generally has to be stored onsight for about a decade at the nuclear power plant before it can be transferred to long-term dry cask storage, all at considerable expense and with high security costs. With costs for solar/wind/storage dropping every year, isn't it time to give up on this pipe dream?

prpl 3y ago
IAEA even used the word burn to denote a nuclear process. Just because it doesn’t meet your definition doesn’t mean it’s not colloquially used within the field
HPsquared 3y ago
2000 tons per year for the whole country though. 20 tons per reactor per year doesn't sound too bad. Compare to the approx 1 billion tons of oil consumption per year, or 4 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year that the rest of the economy burns through, to get a sense of relative scale.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  > 20 tons per reactor per year doesn't sound too bad. Not great, not terrible :) It is super radioactive for centuries though. We really really need to get the long-term storage worked out.
  - peter422 3y ago
    The CO2 released by fossil fuels also can have century spanning impacts.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    > We really really need to get the long-term storage worked out. We did. And there's $52+ billion in the Nuclear Waste Fund. Nevada is just really good at complaining.
    - acidburnNSA 3y ago
      Exactly. We have the money and technology to build and operate repositories that responsibly handle all our nuclear waste. We just need the willpower to go out and do it.
      - eru 3y ago
        Or just give some other country money to do it for you? Finland might do it? (They are also sophisticated and stable enough, that you don't need to worry about the fuel being mishandled. At least not any more than for the US.)
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Yeah just put it in your own back yard then and see how you feel about it :)
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    Radioactive, yes. "Super" radioactive, no. Longer half-life -> less radioactive, by definition. Infinite half-life -> not radioactive at all.
M3L0NM4N 3y ago
Are you saying nuclear is a pipe dream or reprocessing?
gustavus 3y ago
> With costs for solar/wind/storage dropping every year, isn't it time to give up on this pipe dream? When will we give up the pipedream that it's always going to be sunny and windy, especially as climate change continues to exacerbate destructive weather patterns. And when will we give up the pipedream that everywhere in the world is sunny and windy all the time to.
- rgmerk 3y ago
  The question is whether one or more of the seasonal storage technologies on the horizon, when combined with the seasonal storage we already have (conventional hydropower with big honking dams) turns out to give a cheaper electricity system cost than nuclear in a given location. Also worth pointing out that a large fraction of the world’s population lives in places where seasonal storage is not nearly as much of a problem. Seasonal storage is much more of an issue for cool temperate and subarctic zones in the northern hemisphere, where maximum energy demand and minimum solar energy supply occur at the same time. Several billion people across South Asia, south-east Asia, most of South America, Oceania, and most of Africa don’t have this unfortunate misalignment.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    People dont deem to realize that dams are super expensive, dont last forever and can cause cataclismic failures when they break. Stuff that is much worse that nuclear failures. And lets not talk about the destruction of human and animal habitat to make dams in the first place...
    - rgmerk 3y ago
      True, but we already have quite a lot of them, and we’re not going to remove them all immediately.
      - lazide 3y ago
        Most places already have built dams where there is any significant economic value. The only big new ones tend to be in newly developing areas. So not much opportunity to expand there.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Manuel_D 3y ago
"burnt" is a pretty intuitive way of saying the usable energy in the fuel is released. It's a nuclear reaction, not a chemical reaction like combustion, but it's a pretty descriptive term that's also used inside of the nuclear industry itself (I heard a talk from a nuclear engineer about rotating fuel rods to achieve an "even burn", in his own words). Storage remains a big barrier to wide-scale deployment of intermittent power sources in a manner truly independent of a fossil fuel grid. While costs may be dropping, scale and competition with electric vehicles means grid storage isn't growing all that quickly. Many solar plants that are employing storage are only installing 2-4 hours worth of storage, which isn't sufficient to even out the duck curve let alone seasonal variations. Wind also has big swings in seasonal production. Even with significant overproduction, most grids are still looking at several days worth of storage to account for a string a cloudy or less-windy days. Another factor is that wind and solar have significantly different output depending on geography and weather. Nuclear's only geographic requirement is a source of water for cooling - and that doesn't have to be potable water, it can be salt water or wastewater. And since human beings need water, too, this is rarely an impediment to deploying nuclear power plants near the population centers that use the most power. By contrast, wind and solar often need to be produced hundreds of miles away from population centers. This tends to overload the transmission capacity of rural power infrastructure [1], sometimes halting wind and solar projects. 1. https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-energy-high-voltage-transmission-lines https://www.vox.com/videos/22685707/climate-change-clean-ene...
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  I'd go with 'transmutation' - 'burn' is simply used to imply that using uranium is no different than using wood/oil/coal/gas as a fuel, but that's completely unscientific. Burning implies an redox process at the very least, involving an electron acceptor like oxygen mixed with an electron donor like a hydrocarbon and resulting in the destruction of some molecules and the creation of other molecules (e.g. CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O). It's just yet another example of how the nuclear industry tries to spin its activies as safe and harmless. They probably spend as much money on PR these days as they do on R & D.
  - 3y ago
irfwashere 3y ago
I highly recommend Doomberg's substack for energy related analysis. His article "Angels on a Pin" explains how storing nuclear waste is not as scary as people make it out to be. Direct link here: https://doomberg.substack.com/p/angels-on-a-pin https://doomberg.substack.com/p/angels-on-a-pin
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Congress (verbally) fried GM because stories like that hurt the car industry unless people believe they are being dealt with, not because 100 deaths is a large number.
cyberax 3y ago
> Isn't not 'burnt' by any reasonable interpretation of the word It actually is. Spent nuclear fuel goes from 3-5% of U-235 at the start to 0.3% at the end of the fuel campaign. There will also be some fissile plutonium, but not much. Having just 1/10-th of initial fuel left definitely qualifies as "burnt". That's also why reprocessing isn't economical right now. You just won't get that much new fuel. > If the fuel rods were left in the reactor, they'd probably swell That can't physically happen. Nuclear fuel is made of tablets of sintered oxide powders, and they are permeable to gases (helium is the main one produced as a result of fission).
deleted 3y ago
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necheffa 3y ago
> Isn't not 'burnt' by any reasonable interpretation of the word FYI, this is a pretty typical industry term. Even to the point where "burn up" is a unit of measure tracked at operation and within model predictions.
ekianjo 3y ago
> With costs for solar/wind/storage dropping every year, isn't it time to give up on this pipe dream? There is no beating the energy density of uranium.
- eru 3y ago
  Well, but the power plant you need to unlock that energy is pretty big.
Moldoteck 3y ago
Didn't France have a plant specifically for this? And real waste was vitrified to store with less headaches? Anyway, too bad we have too few breeding reactors

windows2020 3y ago

It seems so clear that nuclear is our ultimate energy source. We're wasting so much time on toy windmills and solar panels, and all the batteries required to compensate. There's so many complaints about cost overruns, etc. OK... let's figure it out! Let's put more focus into this and make safe, efficient and clean nuclear happen! This article indicates we're moving closer to that.

afterburner 3y ago
> let's figure it out Renewables already figured it out. They're already cheaper. Nuclear already lost. Until next-gen nuclear is developed, it's over. They're welcome to keep researching it though. Meanwhile, renewables are also getting better, and much faster. And they're already better than nuclear.
- barney54 3y ago
  Riding a bike is cheaper than driving. Driving a car is dead.
  - beretguy 3y ago
    Unless you are in USA because we like to live each in a separate house instead of apartment complex.
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      I'd want a separate house, too, if my neighbors are Americans.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    China produces more power from renewables than the entire generation capacity of the UK. You can build more firm generation capacity with solar and batteries than a typical nuclear generator, in a year, at a cheaper price. Hell of a bike. Nuclear has a niche, but it got steamrolled by the S curve of solar, wind, and batteries.

cameron_b 3y ago

An important detail to go with the statement that we rely on Russia for most of our nuclear fuel is that the market for nuclear fuel was disrupted for ten years by the Megatons to Megawatts program [0] Centrus, the company cited in the ieee article, was the US based side of that exchange, then under the name of the US Enrichment Corporation. [1] While the program was successful at nuclear disarmament ( to the tune of 20,008 warheads [wiki] ) it tanked the market by effectively 'dumping' the fuel, driving centrifuge operators out. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program [1] https://www.centrusenergy.com/who-we-are/history/megatons-to-megawatts/ https://www.centrusenergy.com/who-we-are/history/megatons-to...

irjustin 3y ago
I argue: it goes back further than that - Chernobyl and 3-mile island[0]. Deeply ingrained in the collective psyche that nuclear - when it goes wrong goes _really_ wrong. That really set the tone for where US was willing to go and even if it's overall a better solution people weren't willing to back it while it was too easy to kill politically. Jack Welch's book "Straight from the Gut" talks about how they shifted their entire business to nuclear servicing from development because they saw the changing winds - the correct bet. I'm super excited by this latest development as we accept that we need to learn how to tame the beast that is nuclear fission because the benefits really do outweigh the drawbacks. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
- Civitello 3y ago
  I believe that a significant part of the reason the nuclear is so unpopular is due to the influence of the Simpsons.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Nuclear had PR issues long before the first episode of the simpsons.
  - 3y ago

scythe 3y ago

>However, the type of uranium fuel those reactors use is not going to cut it for the advanced reactors expected to go on line in the coming years If you're like me, you read this sentence and thought: "hey, wasn't that canceled last week?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38199061 But apparently that was NuScale's reactor that was canceled, while TerraPower is still going, which may have something to do with the exceptional wealth of its founder: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bill-gates-future-nuclear-energy-ai/story?id=99160110 https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bill-gates-future-nuclear-... And they seem to have found a way to get even more billionaire bucks: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-gates-warren-buffett-new-nuclear-reactor-wyoming-natrium https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/03/bill-gates-w... There's a "hero we deserve" meme hiding in here somewhere...

legulere 3y ago

Another unwanted dependency on Russia is the finished fuel for Russian reactor designs. Luckily a lot of countries start to go to Westinghouse to let them produce an alternative, but as far as I see it’s only for one nuclear reactor design (VVER-440)

necheffa 3y ago
Westinghouse also supports VVER-1000 too. https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Portals/0/operating%20plant%20services/fuel/Westinghouse%20reprint%20VVER%20Fuel%20NEI.pdf?ver=2018-05-16-150206-040 https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/Portals/0/operating%20pl...
konart 3y ago
At the same time Russia is building new plants in Turkey, India, Hungary, Egypt, China, Iran and Bangladesh.
- hef19898 3y ago
  And that is actually a good thing, at least as far as climate change is concerned. In the West, it is about existing power plants and energy mixes. In those developing countries tjose nuclear plants actually replace yet-to-be-built coal and other fossil fuel plants. If they are finished fast enough, that is. And operated safely.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  A bold move, especially for Hungary. Not sure that plant will ever be finished.

demondemidi 3y ago

We have 93 nuclear reactors? I'm on Team Greta: go nukes.

acidburnNSA 3y ago
Yes, and they make roughly 20% of our electricity, and about 50% of our low-carbon electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_St...
photochemsyn 3y ago
Where are you going to get the uranium ore from to run this project? Where are the high-grade uranium ores that can be economically processed into the required ~200 tons of rods that each 1 GW nuclear power plant requires each year? Let's say we have 0.1% uranium ore, that means we need 1000 tons of ore for each ton of uranium. Huge energy costs, huge waste stream to get that one ton of uranium, by the way. And each 1 GW reactor needs 200 tons - per year. So that's 200,000 tons of ore per year. Now, in comparison, a 1 GW coal-fired power plant needs to be fed with 3-4 million tons of coal per year (energy content of coal varies a bit, in relation to oxygen-based combustion at least). And, a 1 GW reliable 24/7 solar/wind/storage system needs how many tons per year? (OK battery replacement is an issue... work it out yourself).
- d4mi3n 3y ago
  Pebble bed reactors are thing. Thorium reactors are a thing. The tech has improved even if the active reactors have not.
  - bumby 3y ago
    Tbf, I think the commenter was responding in the context of the 93 existing reactors previously mentioned.
- doublespanner 3y ago
  The highest yield current mining and enriching processes beat that by about a factor of 10; there are a few sites globally that achieve that, Canada would be the most relevant. Don't forget that only the high density fuel needs to be shipped long distance as well... For a fully reliable 1gw of wind, that's something like 600 turbines (to simply), each turbine lasts about 20 years, and weighs about 200 tonnes. So about 5000 tonnes of finished wind turbine a year, with an equivalent waste stream.

Horffupolde 3y ago

Reënters

Dylan16807 3y ago
Wow, I think you got flagged for a spelling suggestion.

daguava 3y ago

[dead]

resolutebat 3y ago

> The company is on track to produce 20 kilograms of HALEU by the end of the year, and then expects to produce 900 kg in 2024 > Centrus and the Russian state-owned company Tenex, which are the only two outfits that can produce HALEU in the world > For now, the DOE intends to purchase about 25 tonnes of HALEU per year to kick-start the industry and give HALEU producers secure contracts from which they can expand production So in 2024 the DoE will buy 0.9T from the only American producer, and the remaining 24.1T from Russia?

wew_vlad 3y ago
[flagged]
quickthrower2 3y ago
I assume it goes it again in 2025?
ben7799 3y ago
Did the article imply we buy any from Russia at all? The existing reactors don't use this fuel. This fuel is being ramped up for new reactors that haven't been built yet.

Cypher 3y ago

I'm sure the greens aren't happy about this. They want wind and solar

rlt 3y ago

> The company is on track to produce 20 kilograms of HALEU by the end of the year, and then expects to produce 900 kg in 2024 > 3 tablespoons of HALEU can supply a lifetime’s worth of power for the average U.S. consumer So if I did my math right[1], 20 kg is enough for 1867 U.S. consumers for one year, and 900 kg is enough for 84,000 U.S. consumers? It's a start, I guess. 1. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=20+kg+%2F+%28%283+tablespoons%29+*+%28density+of+uranium%29+%2F+%28US+life+expectancy%29+*+1+year%29 https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=20+kg+%2F+%28%283+table...

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
Lifetime of 85,000 people isn’t that bad. You have 79 years in that calc. That’s 6,700,000 for one year. There only 16 states with populations greater than that. IDK. Seems decent. If we wanted better we should have started 50 years ago. Although now is good too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rlt 3y ago
  I don't think that's right. I multiplied by average lifespan in my original calculation. 3 tbsp of Uranium is about 0.85 kg. 900 kg / 0.85 kg = 1060 US consumer lifetimes worth of energy. Multiply by 79 (average lifespan) and you get 83,740 US consumer years worth of energy.
deleted 3y ago
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spullara 3y ago

Being dependent on an enemy for weapons is as stupid as being dependent on an enemy for food like they are.

romeo88 3y ago
Dependence is mostly no final decision. The cost and lead time for independence is important in strategic considerations.

Animats 3y ago

Sigh. No, the US hasn't been out of the "nuclear fuel game". There are commercial separation plants, including URENCO in Nevada. That fuels existing reactors and new conventional designs such as the AP-1000. This press release is about "high-assay, low-enriched uranium", which isn't used by many reactors yet. If any. NuScale was going to use this stuff. But that project was cancelled a few weeks ago. Costs too much. There are advanced reactors being talked about. Does anyone know of any that actually need this fuel right now? Maybe outside the US there are some. (NRC: "Natural uranium is made of about 0.7 % U-235 and traditional reactor fuel is enriched to between 3% and 5% U-235." High-assay, low-enriched uranium is, per the NRC, 5% - 20% u-235. Weapons grade is around 90%.)

preisschild 3y ago
Normal Light Water reactors could also use HALEU, which would improve the economics, due to less fuel refueling outages. TerraPower (the one where Bill Gates is one of the co-founders) is also planning to use HALEU in this decade to fuel their Natrium reactor.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  > Normal Light Water reactors could also use HALEU, which would improve the economics, due to less fuel refueling outages. Not really. Most reactors in the US produce power about 90% of the time. Reducing the refueling time can increase that to 95%, but that's not going to make a big difference in the profitability of the plant.
manonthewall 3y ago
Trillions on military, not even 100 billion for a manhattan style project to come up with a better fission design that would solve all of our energy problems as well as global warming. Until we have battery densities 10X-20X what we have now solar and wind will always be second tier power sources to traditional and nuclear
credit_guy 3y ago
> NuScale was going to use this stuff. No, NuScale's reactor will use 4.95% enriched Uranium [1]. [1] https://www.nuscalepower.com/-/media/nuscale/pdf/fact-sheets/smr-fact-sheet.pdf https://www.nuscalepower.com/-/media/nuscale/pdf/fact-sheets...

dvh 3y ago

I was pro-nuclear up until ZPP happened. In order to make nuclear safe you would need to know the future and where the frontlines will be which is impossible. Just in my country there are 2 NPP that will be directly on the frontline when Hungary invades us.

4gotunameagain 3y ago
Is this a joke ? From the provided information I can see that you are Slovakian. Why would Hungary invade Slovakia ? Because the Little War happened in 1939 ?
- dvh 3y ago
  This july Orban said in Romania he considers Slovakia to be land forcibly separated from Hungary (https://spectator.sme.sk/c/23197964/viktor-orban-slovakia-romania.html https://spectator.sme.sk/c/23197964/viktor-orban-slovakia-ro...). Here is Orban with map of Hungary on his scarf that includes Slovakia: https://www.startitup.sk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/fidesz-orban-mapa-velkeho-uhorska-900x505.jpeg https://www.startitup.sk/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/fidesz-o... and with current pro-russian slovak government it is not impossible to imagine Slovakia leaving NATO. Then all it takes is one false flag operation and Orban can invade. Orban's Hungary is the same as Putin's Russia. They need external enemy to hold power.
  - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    This is just populist fanfare. Hungary does not have the strength to invade a NATO member. They are not Turkey or Russia. > Orban's Hungary is the same as Putin's Russia yeah except 15 times smaller and with a military that does not compare.
    - dvh 3y ago
      > Hungary does not have the strength to invade a NATO member. So it seems the only way to make Hungary invade Slovakia is to make Slovakia leave NATO. We'll see.

konart 3y ago

Also: https://www.eurasiantimes.com/nuclear-champions-us-lags-behind-russia-china/ https://www.eurasiantimes.com/nuclear-champions-us-lags-behi...

LargoLasskhyfv 3y ago

Why no CANDU? No can do because NIH? Canada commies much?

credit_guy 3y ago
CANDU are fine reactors, but the US uses pressurized water reactors (64) and boiling water reactors (31), which are better. Why? Reactors have various feedback loops, some positive, some negative. You want negative feedback loops rather than positive ones. One of the main feedback loops in water cooled reactors is negative in PWRs and BWRs and positive in CANDU reactors. That doesn't mean CANDU reactors are not usable, but PWRs and BWRs are inherently safer.