4 ms·

"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'

"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.
- tekla 3y ago
  No it doesn't. That would be 'combustion'. Burning is a loose term. The IEAA says so -> https://www.iaea.org/publications/10959/high-burnup-fuel-implications-and-operational-experience https://www.iaea.org/publications/10959/high-burnup-fuel-imp... Nuclear physics says so -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-burning_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-burning_process The term gets used in rocketry, and not all rockets use combustion (doing a burn with a cold gas thruster) Hey, might as well get into CD's -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_authoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_authoring Why is it that the entire industry uses the term just fine, but not you? Because you're wrong.
  - photochemsyn 3y ago
    Power production via uranium (or other related heavy element) fission is simply unlike any other process. It's basically a proximity effect, as if you place the fuel rods close enough to one another with water in between them, you initiate the process. The U-235 fuel is continually decaying, releasing neutrons. In the context of enriched fuel rods in the proper orientation in a watery environment, this means other U-235 nuclei will absorb such neutrons, becoming unstable and splitting into two smaller nuclei, known as fission fragments - of a remarkably wide variety, many of them unstable and generating further nuclear reactions. Along with the fragments, several fast neutrons and a significant amount of energy are released. The water in the reactor acts as a moderator, slowing down the fast neutrons released in the fission process. Slower neutrons are more likely to cause subsequent fissions in other uranium-235 nuclei, sustaining the chain reaction. Now, the fission fragments are highly radioactive and unstable isotopes of lighter elements. These fragments undergo beta and gamma decay, emitting high-energy particles and photons, transforming into stable isotopes over time. Furthermore, some neutrons, instead of inducing fission in uranium-235, are absorbed by uranium-238 nuclei, typically actinides, like plutonium and neptunium. So this ridiculously toxic brew of rather random radioactive heavy elements is what we call a 'spent fuel rod'. If you were to pack a few kilos of high explosive around one of these 'spent' fuel rods and detonate it in a city center, it would probably cost at least a billion dollars to clean up, if that. It sounds kind of ridiculous when you can build 1 GW of reliable 24/7 wind/solar/storage power generation for the same cost as a 1 GW nuclear power plant, and then you never have to buy fuel or deal with the waste stream ever, doesn't it?

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.

tekla 3y ago
No it doesn't. That would be 'combustion'. Burning is a loose term. The IEAA says so -> https://www.iaea.org/publications/10959/high-burnup-fuel-implications-and-operational-experience https://www.iaea.org/publications/10959/high-burnup-fuel-imp... Nuclear physics says so -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-burning_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-burning_process The term gets used in rocketry, and not all rockets use combustion (doing a burn with a cold gas thruster) Hey, might as well get into CD's -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_authoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_authoring Why is it that the entire industry uses the term just fine, but not you? Because you're wrong.
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  Power production via uranium (or other related heavy element) fission is simply unlike any other process. It's basically a proximity effect, as if you place the fuel rods close enough to one another with water in between them, you initiate the process. The U-235 fuel is continually decaying, releasing neutrons. In the context of enriched fuel rods in the proper orientation in a watery environment, this means other U-235 nuclei will absorb such neutrons, becoming unstable and splitting into two smaller nuclei, known as fission fragments - of a remarkably wide variety, many of them unstable and generating further nuclear reactions. Along with the fragments, several fast neutrons and a significant amount of energy are released. The water in the reactor acts as a moderator, slowing down the fast neutrons released in the fission process. Slower neutrons are more likely to cause subsequent fissions in other uranium-235 nuclei, sustaining the chain reaction. Now, the fission fragments are highly radioactive and unstable isotopes of lighter elements. These fragments undergo beta and gamma decay, emitting high-energy particles and photons, transforming into stable isotopes over time. Furthermore, some neutrons, instead of inducing fission in uranium-235, are absorbed by uranium-238 nuclei, typically actinides, like plutonium and neptunium. So this ridiculously toxic brew of rather random radioactive heavy elements is what we call a 'spent fuel rod'. If you were to pack a few kilos of high explosive around one of these 'spent' fuel rods and detonate it in a city center, it would probably cost at least a billion dollars to clean up, if that. It sounds kind of ridiculous when you can build 1 GW of reliable 24/7 wind/solar/storage power generation for the same cost as a 1 GW nuclear power plant, and then you never have to buy fuel or deal with the waste stream ever, doesn't it?