Dr G

James Lovelock, inventor of the GAIA theory and a prominent environmentalist, has announced his position that:

"Nuclear is the only practical energy source that we could apply in time to offset the threat from accumulating greenhouse gases."

What do you think about that?

gzent

Nuclear power, fision now and fusion later on, should be our main source of electricity, but silly politics prevent this from happening.

As for "accumulating greenhouse gases" and global warming I have a very hard time believing any of the predictions because the "models" used to predict global changes are not even able to accurately predict the past decade, much less the future.

Mikey

"Accumulating Greenhouse Gasses"........

Sounds like Capitol Hill.

Where do we store the spent fuel rods?

M.

gzent

In concrete filled pits in the desert.

Mikey

Sounds good to me.

Let's do it, and tell those Arabs to shove their oil

:P

Dr G

wrong, wrong, wrong. gzent --

You use "breeder" reactors instead of "thermal" ones, these use what is currently wasted for fuel.

Fuel usage is multiplied by factor of about 100 [it makes "breeds" its own fuel], you can use uranium and thorium for fuel.

theory is there will be little or no long lived radioactive waste left to bury

uatrmpt

Anything that reduces our dependence on middle eastern oil gets my vote.

gzent

Yes, technically you could reuse spent fuel rods if it were economically feasible, but breeder reactors are not. There are none in the US and only a handful remaining in Europe. Again, politics have all but killed them.

As for fusion:

"Progress in fusion research has been promising, but the development of practical systems for creating a stable fusion reaction that produces more power than it consumes will probably take decades to realize. The research is expensive, as well. " - "Nuclear Energy," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2004

See:
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_...ar_Energy.html

for a nice, easy read on the subject.

Dr G

Apparently not everyone got the same message regarding costs of fast breeder reactors.
The Japanese are proceeding [although with some political problems] to deploy fast breeder reactors:

http://www.jnc.go.jp/zmonju/mjweb/

As is India:

http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes....artid=39483275

As well as a number of other countries that are proceeding with fast reactors:

http://www.jnc.go.jp/zmonju/mjweb/worldmen.htm

[this is the listing of the countries on the Monju site]

Japle

That's the cool and ironic part. We dump them down depleted oil wells!
They'll be perfectly safe. After all, the oil was in there for millions of years.