FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Reflections on fusion history, current events, and predictions for the 'fusion powered future.
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Chris Bradley
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FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Chris Bradley »

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear ... om-the-sea

"
The best method works like this: A polymer substrate—basically, plastic—is irradiated, and then chemicals with an affinity for uranium are grafted onto it. The material is woven into 60-meter-long braids, and these are then brought out by boat to water at least 100 meters deep. ...“You get between 2 and 4 grams of uranium sticking to this stuff per kilogram of plastic,” says Erich Schneider, a nuclear engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. “That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it all adds up.”
"
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Dennis P Brown
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Does not sound any where near as good after I read more of the details:

"then the cost is US $1230 per kilogram of uranium, about a factor of 10 more expensive than traditional mining."

That is way too expensive to even attempt to day at current energy prices and worst still, existing reactors already cost more to operate than revenue they generate using the low cost fuel.

Also, this:

'a reactor would need' ... "5500 kilograms of uranium from this process in a year, Schneider says “you would need—get ready for this—a million tons of plastic per year."

This also assumes ideal processing conditions (real world problems are always overlooked or are not apparent until a process is taken out of the lab and scaled up as well as put into operation.)

This is a hopeful development but of little current value and even if it works - then prices for fuel would need to first go through the roof before the process would be worth the effort ...also, I'd think the world/US economy would be on the rocks at that point, anyway.

Another point (ignoring this fuel cost) is that it would take decades to have any impact due to cycle up time needed to build enough processing plants and enough new reactors to even need a new source of fuel.

The biggest show stopper besides cost is that we are still missing a cost effective fission based reactor.

It is good that an approch is being put forward and maybe in twenty or more years this might be viable. Then fusion might be viable by then, too - can hope.
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Richard Hull
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Richard Hull »

Current market price for Uranium (always sold on the open market as U3O8) $48.00/lb ~$110.00/kilogram. (Sept 18 2012) Note, to get this price, at least 1 ton must be bought if you plan to take delivery.

It must be dredged up as the oxide and or chloride. Nice and interesting method of fishing for the U stuff!

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
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Chris Bradley
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Chris Bradley »

Dennis P Brown wrote:
...
> That is way too expensive to even attempt to day at current energy prices and worst still, existing reactors already cost more to operate than revenue they generate using the low cost fuel....
> It is good that an approch is being put forward and maybe in twenty or more years this might be viable. Then fusion might be viable by then, too - can hope.

Yes, the purpose of the article appeared to be saying 'all is not lost' if we do run out of U ore within 100 years, rather than looking at immediate viability of the scheme.

But in another way you are right that it is borderline irrelevant (IMHO) not so much because of fusion but because if we get into that state without having finally 'bitten the bullet' and got on with fast breeder reactors, then it'd probably mean we're in a pretty sorry state to actual make any decisions about anything much that is 'nuclear'.
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Huh..

Running out of uranium ore in 100 years....

When are we going to realize that finding a new source of energy is not the solution, we need to change the crazy way we live. The life style we have developed is a result of our lack of foresight and apparently unlimited supply of oil.

It is perfectly possible to live on this planet without upsetting it, the dinosaurs did it for 160 million years, and they had a brain the size of a chicken.

Apply some lateral thinking to the problem.

This site has some interesting reading...

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/

This is not fusion related, but worth reading if we are going to hang around long enough to see fusion work fr us.

Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Sesselmann - Various papers and patents on RG
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Chris Bradley
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Chris Bradley »

... because we are a technologically based species that require energy (rather than hunter-gathering oversized chickens!).
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Edward Miller »

It would be a lot easier to put those same plastics in the smokestacks of coal power plants.

The coal industry releases more Uranium into the air than is used by the nuclear industry every year.
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Chris,

...."we are technologically based species"

Well for hundreds of thousands of years we were not doing anything more advanced than oversized chickens, going along quite nicely I might add, we only started using iPads in the last couple of years.

Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that the alternative is to go back and start living as hunter gatherers. We could use the technology we have, and the limited resources, to build a sustainable future, but one that does not depend on short term resources, but we can't do it for 9 Billion people..

The world population is in overshoot, and the proverbial "shit" is going to hit the fan sooner or later, in the worst case scenario, we might even loose much of the technology we have gained, and one day when we can no longer afford to run the internet, the iPad might get a second life as a cutting board for raw meat if you can find it.

Steven
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Richard Hull
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Richard Hull »

We are indeed, a technology based species and our energy needs will follow the population proportionally, but technology, as, or if, it advances will increase such needs disproportionally. For all our belief in the future, we are still just hunter-gatherers with a bigger brain and too clever by half.

The world (nature) self-regulates much like a culture in a petri dish. Whether we shed the necessary 2-3 billion humans via starvation, nuclear war, total breakdown of civilization, pandemic or a combination of them all, it is not really important, for it will happen, and like fusion, real soon now.

A confluence of events is on the rise and whether you or I deem the ultimate results good or bad, the universe and the earth, itself, takes no notice or cares about you, me, our children or the future of any species. All of this will occur regardless of any cerebration on the part of our much bigger brains. We can only hope that our reptillian brain stem hasn't been so subverted, that some of us will survive to once again focus on the use of our "higher powers".

In the end, gravity still works and this slag heap will continue to orbit, regardless of what kind of thin film is on its surface.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by ab0032 »

I agree with you, but this will give us no more than 1 million tons of Uranium and 2 million tons of Thorium. http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev ... lmain.html

The estimate on the amount in the sea will let us get Uranium for the next billion years from oceans even without breeding. I am sure we will soon have breeding and fusion too.

Long long before Uranium will run out anyways.

The trick with current rates of consumption is what most people dont understand. Energy consumption has risen by 3% pa for the last 150 years and it has seemed to have picked up a little speed recently. So I expect that energy consumption will continue on its exponential path. There is no rational reason to believe otherwise.

All third world people will want to have a washing machine, a TV, a car, regular holy day flights, heating, air con, microwaves, mobile phones, internet and all the rest too, and we will not be able to stop them from getting all this, which costs energy. It would be immoral to not let them have it, and I am not the one who does not want them to have a modern life with education, medicine and clean water and so on.

Only the anti-humanist ecologists want this. But they will fail, all their rhetoric was ridiculed by reality, all their Club of Rome prophecies have turned out to be nonsense. What they are underestimating is the creativity of human beings. Empirically it is easy to see that resources increase as population increases. All this Malthusian thinking is bullshit and has been proven wrong and wrong again.

Once we have fusion and space travel we will move to the next level again and prove these anti-humanist wrong again.

With current nuclear technology we could feed 70 billion people on earth today, we could desalinate seawater and turn the Sahara into a huge oasis, but the greens wont let us. By opposing gen tech and nuclear power and by turning food into gas (ethanol and plant oil diesel) they are responsible for millions of death in the third world. One could say they have outdone Hitler, Stalin and Mao together.

On the other hand alternative forms of energy like wind and solar will never be able to get us past 2060 at 3% growth in energy consumption. Even if we needed only 10% of the Sahara today, completely covered with PV to give the world all the energy it needs, all the deserts in the world covered end to end with wind and solar would not be enough to give us the energy we will need in 2100. This is just a pipe dream. Simple back of the envelop calculations easily show that it wont work, we cant afford to cover all deserts with panels, they would just take too much resources and too much energy to produce.

Whoever hasnt understood what the greens are about should read Merchants of Despair by the NASA scientist Robert Zubrin. http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Despair ... 1594034761
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by ab0032 »

Steven, we are not in overshoot. You have listened too much to Malthusians. Dont believe them.
As you probably know, the key to food and all the rest is energy, it can turn around entropy.
And we have abundant energy through nuclear power, more than we can currently use. We will have to be creative to find ways to use all this energy that is just waiting for us to be used.
This whole thinking that we should save energy is all wrong. If we wanted to we could heat out the open window with nuclear made electricity without harming nature. With a good and clean conscience.
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Chris Bradley
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Chris Bradley »

The problem I see is that the whole basis of society is fundamentally based on money (rather than money being a tool to assist bartering). In turn, it is no longer based on fair bartering but instead is based on banking and financial government that is predicated on continuous growth.

Continuous and everlasting growth is what the whole of the modern world's finances are based on, but it is obviously flawed.

If someone solves fusion right now, that can feed power into the organs of industry at low cost and no bad side-effects, all that it would serve to do at the moment is help extend the impossible model of everlasting industrial growth. That needs to be 'solved' before fusion power (if it is possible at all) will really make the difference it should end up making.

I reckon this could be the reason that we've never detected a signal from an extra-terrestrial species - not because technological species are rare, but simply that they can only be sustained for 200 years or so - which is probably longer than it takes for the signal just to get here, by which time they'll have reverted back to 'medieval' living off the land as we are likely to do. That way we'll always miss each other's signals while we're capable of replying!

We need 100% nuclear power right now so that fast-breeders have time to take off. We need to preserve fossil-fuel supplies, essential chemical feedstock that is simply being burned - crazy - and we need to develop fusion energy to replace the fast-breeders over time, enough to comfortably avoid getting anywhere near running out of fissionable materials.
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Frank Sanns »

Most of the civilization of the planet has lived without nuclear or fossil fuel energy. Those energies are very recent developments in only the past couple hundred years. The dependence on them though has risen steadily. If a little is good then more it better thinking prevails.

We have a bucket that is being filled with energy mostly from fossil fuels and nuclear. There is a hole in the bottom of the bucket. The smaller the hole the less energy is needed to keep the bucket full. If the bottom of the bucket is removed and energy is used wastefully and without regard then the energy supply need approaches infinity. Shall we all have our own dedicated 100 MW nuclear reactor in each of our back yards? Energy alone is not going to give us a better life style or a chance to travel to the stars. Energy is just a commodity that we have learned to depend on. While it should be available to all on the planet, it needs to be introduced in an intelligent manner so it is appreciated and used judiciously and not gluttonously.

There will not be just one solution to the energy on the planet. If we fast forward ahead 100 years when fossil fuels are not ubiquitous what will we do for energy? My guess is that we will be very efficient in our use and enjoy the same lifestyle that the ancient Egyptians had and that we now have no matter what the source and quantity of the energy will be. How quickly that transition occurs will be a key factor in the amount of chaos that may ensue. Slow being good, fast due to crisis being bad.

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We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Doug Browning »

I saw an article, probably in Sci Am, a couple of years ago that analyzed the amount of energy per $ of GDP in western civilization and the US in particular. Energy per $ GDP was steadily rising and it was due to higher technology. So any crunch in energy supply is going to crush the West first. Rather alarming.

On the other hand, one only has to look at some new technology like Dr Norbert Mueller's Wave Disc Generator at Michigan State to realize that inexpensive 100 MPG cars could easily be the reality today if there weren't so much "inertia" holding the auto industry back. I suspect that once energy starts to become scarce, technology development will begin to respond to the challenge. Energy has been so cheap historically that we have developed wastefull technology all along without any concern. Diffusion pumps are a case in point, only a few $ more material and they can use 1/4 the energy. Just look at all the rental housing and business buildings that were built as cheap as possible for the landlord with the renter be da_ned by high heating/cooling costs.
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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Steven Sesselmann »

Don,

Humans don't behave rationally...,as energy becomes more expensive I predict the rich will use more of it.., just look around!

Global warming and diminishing oil supply is now common knowledge, yet cars are getting bigger, it is a show of wealth to park a massive SUV in your driveway.

Indoor skiing in Saudi Arabia is on the agenda for sure, if it doesn't already exist...!

Steven

[edit]
....sorry it already exists http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeMcIKnPLdA

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Re: FYI: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-fuel-from-the-sea

Post by Doug Browning »

By the Saudi's own estimates, their growing internal consumption of oil will eclipse their production by 2030. For that reason they are currently soliciting bids for a massive nuclearization of their economy. Mexico has already become an oil importer. North Sea oil, poof.

Then we have Fermi's paradox, where the evidence for extra-terrestrial civilizations should be obvious in the heavens, yet nothing whatsoever appears in the sky. I would suggest that the SETI people are looking for the wrong signals. They should be looking for dead radioactive planets. Earth is setting an example.

The perception of SUVs as wealth is auto destructive in the long run. As the oil supply diminishes, their image will progressively become one of a mentally deficient driver wasting precious fuel. The addition of heavy armor to SUVs from paranoid fears will then drag their fuel economy down so badly as to unreliably make the next refueling stop. These people will be doing a lot of walking in 100+ temps with body armor on, while 100+ MPG carbon fiber vehicles whiz by, unconcerned.
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