11 ms·
New nuclear fuel source would power human race until 5000AD
- gliese1337 14y agoThe 5000AD date is admittedly just an estimate, but I am extremely sceptical of any such prediction. It just depends too much on what new uses for lots of energy we might come up with over the next thousand years. How many people will there be to use it? What standard of living will they demand? And that standard of living actually require more energy, or will other technological advances make us far more efficient with the power we generate? The article even states that different groups estimates of how long Earth's uranium could last vary by more than a factor of 2.
- TallGuyShort 14y agoI don't think it's an unfair way to express the estimate though. Sure, it might not really last until 5000 AD, but to me it simply implies 3000 "years of fuel", with a "year of fuel" being how we use fuel now. If energy consumption goes up or down it doesn't really matter - I still have a sense of how significant this energy source is.
- aidenn0 14y agoYes, but growth sucks. Assuming 3000 years in the article means what you think it means, consider exponential and linear growth: If energy usage doubles every 30 years (pulled that out of my ass, it's not likely the trend but divides nice into 3000) then it will last us less than 200 years If energy usage grows linearly increasing by the current amount every 30 years (so in 2042 we are using double, and 2072 we are using triple) it's lasts us a bit over 400 years.
- gliese1337 14y agoAnd in any case, 3000 years is still finite. There will come a time, if we don't go extinct or experience the rapture, when nuclear fuel will run out, and we'll have to use renewables anyway. Fortunately, the sun puts out a rather large amount of power, and even 200 years is a pretty good amount of time for figuring out how to capture it better.
- nickik 14y agoThe question really is if going to something 'harder' now is worth while. We do something more expensive (and have large oppertunity cost) to avoid problem we will only really have in 200 years. If you look at the change of technology in the last 100 years you can only assume how small this problem will be then.
- nickik 14y agoThe question really is if going to something 'harder' now is worth while. We do something more expensive (and have large oppertunity cost) to avoid problem we will only really have in 200 years. If you look at the change of technology in the last 100 years you can only assume how small this problem will be then. I mean in 200 years using solar energy will possibly be cheaper then fossil fuel, and if it is not we will be better equiped to solve the problem then. I do not want to say that we should not keep working in direction of renewable energy but I think it is a valid question.
- lutusp 14y agoThis idea only makes sense if the used-fuel disposal problem is resolved, and it is not at all resolved. It would be like claiming that the coal supply is unlimited, but without addressing the problem of emissions.
- rosser 14y agoThe used-fuel problem is already solved. The solution is just effectively permanently blocked by NIMBY-ism.
- pgrote 14y agoWhat is the permanent solution?
- bdunbar 14y agoThere are several. One is to dump it in the Mariana trench, let nature push it back down into the crust. If we're foresighted, we'll bombard a crater in the moon with it. It won't go anywhere, and if we need to get it back, there it is.
- jfoutz 14y agoSpace launch is risky, not just perceived as risky, actually risky. rocketry isn't one of those 5 9's of reliability activities.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoI really thought this was going to be about Thorium. Surprise - its about extracting Uranium from seawater.
- mrinterweb 14y agoI can not figure out why more effort is not put into thorium nuclear technology research. The only reason I have heard why thorium is not being considered is because it is not weaponizable. Are there any other reasons why thorium based nuclear fission is not being pursued as an energy source?
- davidcuddeback 14y agoI was just about to ask the same question. I hadn't heard of Thorium-based nuclear power until now, so I just read a summary of it on Wikipedia [1]. It seems like a promising technology for further research, so I'm wondering what the source is for the "Thorium? Not again" reactions. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power
- Osiris 14y agohttp://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/20034/what-practical-issues-remain-for-the-adoption-of-thorium-reactors http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/20034/what-practi...
- fatbird 14y agoFrom what I've heard, it's because we've now got decades of experience engineering uranium fission reactors, during which we've learned tons about the practical engineering challenges involved. While thorium looks great on paper, engineers expect we'll need decades of working with it before a similar body of expertise is available, during which accidents may occur that we know how to avoid with uranium, etc. In other words, without uranium being scarce and expensive, and with thorium being lumped in the same "nuclear" bucket (with all the political hurdles that implies), it doesn't make much economic sense to start over with thorium.
- 14y ago
- rauljara 14y ago"Since the Fukushima meltdown - as a result of which, not a single person is set to be measurably harmed by radiation - we know that nuclear power is safe." It seems to me like the primary danger from radiation like that leaked from Fukushima would be an increase in cancer. I think it's a little early to be claiming that Fukushima will cause no increase harm to humans. There is already evidence that it caused harm to the surrounding environment, though butterflies are admittedly much more fragile than humans. http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/14/13274288-study-japan-nuclear-disaster-caused-mutated-butterflies?lite http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/14/13274288-study...
- anigbrowl 14y agoOne of the interesting things about the pale grass butterfly results is that until now scientists considered such insects to be fairly resistant to environmental radiation at a genetic level, notwithstanding their physical delicacy. There are some references to this in the Nature paper. Those findings must be very disturbing to prospective or recent parents that lived in the vicinity of the nuclear plant.
- chc 14y agoThe article isn't very specific on the specific vectors at work here, but from what the scientists did, it sounds like those butterflies were very close indeed and literally ate radioactive materials. So it may not be relevant to local parents unless their kids eat a lot of dirt right outside power plants.
- crpatino 14y ago> ... unless their kids eat a lot of dirt ... You don't have any kids yourself, I take. They are entropy machines! You never know what stupid (from adult perspective) thing they are going to do next. Besides, it may be nitpicking, but kids eating dirt right outside power plants would die horrible deaths within days. It is the lesser doses in the rear by populated areas whose effects may not be so well understood.
- anigbrowl 14y agoI'm pro-nuclear, but I can't take this writer's hand-wavey dismissal of the risks seriously.
- drucken 14y agoIndeed - same boat. I wondered if Lewis Page's infamous and uniquely biased ramblings, particularly on any issues of nuclear power, US military or IP but in general any topic, would ever grace HN's front page. Guess that day is today... I actually stopped reading The Register, before discovering Hacker News, just to get away from that "journalist" whose daily prolificness on that site alone was disturbing.
- ZoFreX 14y agoHonestly, I don't think it's that hand-wavey when nuclear has killed less people ever than coal does every year.
- anigbrowl 14y agoPeople are more frightened of things they don't understand, so effective advocacy of nuclear power requires making the effort to bridge the information gap. Also, people find concentrated acute harm more scary than dispersed chronic harm, which is why the idea of a plane crash is more disturbing than the larger number of people killed in road accidents.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- prawks 14y agoIf you've read Normal Accidents by Perrow, how would you respond to someone who said that a good reason is because of the extreme complexity of nuclear power coupled with our relatively new understanding of it? I think that's a pretty good criticism of nuclear power.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
- debacle 14y agoI think right now our biggest problem is not energy sources but energy storage. If we had an amazing vessel for energy storage, the sourcing problem would become relatively moot - there's so much available passive renewable energy, all we need to do is collect it.
- eeeeaaii 14y agoIn the article linked to from this article: A preliminary report by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency has stated that the response to the Fukushima nuclear incident was "exemplary" and that nobody has been harmed by radiation exposure resulting from it. That seems to contract what the Japanese government's own panel concluded: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718057 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18718057
- ianb 14y agoThe article on safety this article links to is a year older than the article itself (though same author). It doesn't seem responsible to me to leave out a year of analysis of the effect of Fukushima, and I don't think it's been a particularly positive year. In some ways if Fukushima was a result of human error (as that report indicates), then that's positive: it's resolvable. But if we scaled nuclear power up to 10x what it currently is I would worry about more human error, and introducing nuclear power to places that have even more problems with reliability, or cultural problems with creating reliable systems. A nuclear power plant in Nigeria? I'm sure there are very reliable people who could staff and monitor the plant, and that those people could be attracted to the jobs, but I don't trust the political infrastructure of the nation to ensure that all actually happens. That no one uses shoddy concrete, or pushes problems under the table instead of resolving them and opening oneself up to blame, or manipulates risk assessment to protect their personally acquired power in the working of the plant.
- DanielBMarkham 14y agoLet's reverse the logic. Instead of talking about how much radioactive material we're pulling from the ocean, how much could we put in? Am I mistaken in saying that we could put back in every bit of radioactive material we'd use until 5000AD and only double the natural background radiation amount? I know the math isn't exact -- it's not a symmetry -- but on a rough-order-of-magnitude basis, is that a reasonable conclusion?
- dexen 14y agoProbably makes sense, but you'd have hard time to pull this one off given the state of modern-day press and other media. Suppose scientists calculate seawater contains, on average, N parts per million of Uranium and aim at inceasing it to just N+1 (assuming N >> 1). Armchair `ecologists' -- think Greenpeace -- would go thermonuclear on you -- and mass media would give those `ecologists' much more print space and air time than to the scientists. Public opinion would be skewed from the get-go.
- ScotterC 14y agoEssentially yes. The ocean is a fantastic dump for radioactive material. Also, it only takes 10 ft of water to block all radiation, alpha, beta and gamma. However. Radioactive 'waste' is actually really useful. We can recycle it and use it. It's just a matter of regulations and cost. I'd much rather make our radioactive by products readily accessible for when we can use it as either fuel (only need a higher neutron flux) or extract elements for various uses.
- comicjk 14y agoNo; the waste is far more radioactive than the fuel. Nuclear fuel rods are perfectly safe to touch when they're first made; they rapidly become more dangerous as they fission in the reactor. By the time they come out they are lethal. Then their lethality slowly dies off as the short-lived fission products decay. It would be a very bad idea to mix raw nuclear waste into the sea.
- ars 14y ago> but on a rough-order-of-magnitude basis, is that a reasonable conclusion? No. Uranium is barely radioactive. In contrast the waste from a power plant is very radioactive. Radioactivity is directly related to half life: The longer the half life, the less radioactive, and the reverse as well. Uranium 235 has a half life of close to a billion years, and 238 (the much more common kind) of nearly 5 billion years. So it's barely radioactive. Once you "cook" it in a reactor you generate all sorts of isotopes with much shorter half lives (so none exist naturally in any quantity). Those isotopes are also much more radioactive. The good thing is that the very powerful ones don't last long. The "worst" isotopes are the medium lived ones. Short enough to be radioactive, long enough to last for centuries. Of those Strontium-90 and Caesium-137 are the main ones. Now you also know why nuclear fuel reprocessing is a great idea. The uranium left behind after a pass through a reactor has not been changed (it's not any more radioactive than it was before it started) - you can isolate it chemically and use it again (only a small amount actually burns each time). You still need to deal with the dangerous stuff, but the quantity is massively reduced. (Technically you can burn that as well in a reactor to other shorter lived isotopes, and essentially destroy any hazard, but I don't believe anyone does that.) Just to respond to your actual idea, there are proposals to bury waste in subduction zones. You can find more about it via google https://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear+subduction+zone https://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear+subduction+zone
- rorrr 14y ago5000AD estimate is complete bullshit. Our energy consumption doubles every ~20 years (15 to 35 by various sources). In only 10 doublings (200 years) our energy consumption will increase 1,000 times. After 20 doublings (400 years), it will increase 1,000,000 times. I expect by then we will be using mostly fusion and/or the energy of the Sun (and/or some new energy source).
- jlgreco 14y agoIf you keep that extrapolation up, you are going to get an argument for starting construction on a Dyson sphere. That may be the correct goal, but we really are in no position yet to reason about the necessity or practicality of such energy expenditure.
- learc83 14y agoDon't you think we might not stay on that curve forever? At some point growth in access to western amenities (climate control, transportation, better food) will level off, and population growth will level off. Also in 1000 years we'll have athletes who finish races before they begin.
- rorrr 14y ago> Don't you think we might not stay on that curve forever? Not forever, but the exponential growth is inevitable while the resources are available and are used more and more efficiently.
- fowkswe 14y agoas rauljara mentions, the claim that fukishima was victimless is a bit bloated. nothing i've seen or heard leads me to believe that nuclear waste management is a sustainable thing. this sounds like the oceanic equivelant of fracking.
- cobrausn 14y agonothing i've seen or heard leads me to believe that nuclear waste management is a sustainable thing Keep reading. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf04.html http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf04.html Disclosure: Former US Navy radiological controls MOS.
- FlorianMettetal 14y agoShouldn't we be conserving nuclear fuel for space flight and other operations where you require a very dense power source?
- ars 14y agoWhy conserve it? There's tons of it.
- afterburner 14y agoThe problem with nuclear power generation today is it's always way more expensive than promised, in often unpredictable and sometimes not-easily-quantifiable ways. Add the uninsurable nature, the constant risk of human error/decision making increasing the risk factor (eg. not decommissioning old plants), and waste problem, and it gets even less attractive. Meanwhile, renewable energy and power grid improvements continue to be underfunded, and everyone claims the only alternative is coal.
- pjscott 14y agoIt's not inherently more expensive than promised; that's caused by a combination of first-of-a-kind construction and unpredictable political and regulatory situations. In places like South Korea, where they have a more reasonable regulatory situation and they build a bunch of each type of plant, they've had a better track record with completing nuclear plants on time and within an affordable budget.
- justatdotin 14y ago"too cheap to meter" they promised.
- SudarshanP 14y agoWe seem to be discussing pros and cons of nuclear. But is this assertion of reasonably extractable uranium from sea water even true? Considering the source to be theregister, what I would like to know is whether the energy available as per the paper is really as big as claimed? or is it just clever math? Keeping aside the issue of waste disposal, are the costs really that low or is the cost cleverly buried elsewhere?
- justatdotin 14y agothis is an old non-story. the energy required to extract the low levels of uranium from huge volumes of seawater outweigh the energy that uranium can produce as fuel for a nuclear power reactor.
- tokenadult 14y agoI thought that the Hacker News community was a lot more alert to avoiding upvoting linkbait articles like this. First of all, the entire main story point of the article is based on PRESS RELEASES, not on peer-reviewed articles published in good-quality scientific journals. Second, even if a statement like the premise of the article were published in a peer-reviewed article in a good-quality scientific journal, you would still want to check the methodology of the study described in the article for the "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" that Google's director of research, LISP hacker Peter Norvig, is always warning us about. http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html Third, the article is about a public policy proposal, so it's not just about physics, it's about economics and the psychology of the general public as well. As Thomas Sowell has written, "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." What the public wants is as much energy as can be humanly desired, with total safety, and at nil cost. The efforts of politicians to reconcile these contradictory desires may very well result in a regulatory pattern that doesn't let this new technology thrive. As a matter of economics, this technology should only thrive if it genuinely provides a better cost-benefit trade-off than other proposed energy technologies, which the article hand-waves away as an issue. Discussions on Hacker News are better if they are launched by submission of better sources. This source, on this subject, is below general community standards. We can learn more about new possibilities in energy technology from (for example) Technology Review (several HN participants regularly submit articles from that source) or The Economist (I am one of several HN participants who submit articles from that source) or the better professionally edited mainstream newspapers or general news weeklies. We don't need to rush ahead to speculate about every new press release here.
- ktizo 14y agoThe register can be good on tech issues, however it just goes completely mental if anyone mentions the words climate, nuclear, green or wikipedia anywhere within the editors earshot. Or if anyone shows Lewis a picture of some guns. After a while I have decided that the most likely explanation for their behaviour is that they are mostly just trying to troll hippies and don't necessarily actually believe a lot of what they print. Trolling the readership is fairly common in the UK press anyway, the Mail having turned it into something of an art.
- jakejake 14y agoI decided to look up some of the authors previous articles and he has an pretty impressive range of alien conspiracy theory and climate change related articles including: "NASA: WE'VE FOUND Four-toed NON-HUMAN FOOTPRINTS" "Martian lakes seen where NASA Curiosity rover WON'T BE GOING" "Using Facebook causes less eco damage than farting, figures show" "Climate was HOTTER in Roman, medieval times than now: Study" "Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show" "Amount of meat we eat will barely affect future climate change" http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Lewis%20Page http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Lewis%20Page