“Draft” 1feb2020 Nuclear Power: Policies, Practices, and the Future, 2nd Ed. Scrivener/Wiley 2020(?) (alternative? A Nuclear Powered Green New Deal: A whistleblower’s explanation of why nuclear power still isn’t ‘renewable’ Darryl Duane Siemer, PhD, retired Idaho National Laboratory "Consulting Scientist" (1978-2006), [email protected] Contents Introduction ............................................................................................... 9 Chapter 1. Africa’s especially special issues ...................................... 19 Chapter 2. Why everything boils down to energy inputs ................... 27 2.1 How much clean sustainable energy will our descendants need? . 37 2.2 This book’s technological fix’s specifics ....................................... 49 2.2.1 Which food crops should our descendants raise and how much land would that take? ......................................................................... 49 2.2.2 The whys and costs of desalination .......................................... 55 2.2.3 Fertilizers .................................................................................. 60 2.3 The reasons why politically correct renewables couldn’t “save the world” ................................................................................ 67 Chapter 3. A sustainable nuclear renaissance’s other “killer apps” ... 72 3.1 Atmospheric carbon sequestration ................................................. 73 3.2 Oceanic acidification mitigation .................................................... 80 3.3 Nuclear powered transportation ..................................................... 82 3.3.1 Requirements ............................................................................ 82 3.3.2 Direct electrical transportation ................................................. 85 3.3.3 “Nuclear hydrogen”’s synthetic transportation fuels ............... 88 3.4 Weinberg & Goeller’s “ Age of Substitutability” ......................... 98 3.5 Still more apps .............................................................................. 103 Chapter 4. Why genuine sustainability requires breeder reactors ... 104 4.1 Green energy’s dirty little secrets ................................................. 105 4.1.1 The lessons that Germany’s Energiewende should teach us .. 107 4.1.2 Other countries’ green plans and experiences ........................ 115 4.1.3 Green power’s waste issues .................................................... 117 4.1.4 Energy Storage - Green energy’s biggest issue ...................... 121 4.2 Converter (burner) vs breeder-type nuclear reactors ................... 130 Chapter 5. Today’s more promising breeder reactor concepts ......... 141 5.1 Heavy water thorium breeders ..................................................... 141 5.2 Liquid metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs) ............................. 144 5.3 General Atomic’s solid fueled gas cooled fast reactor concept ... 146 5.4 Molten salt reactors ...................................................................... 149 5.4.1 MSFR ...................................................................................... 152 5.4.2 MCFR ..................................................................................... 155 5.4.3 MOLTEX ................................................................................ 164 5.4.4 Tube in Shell Thorium Breeder .............................................. 168 5.4.5 LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor) .................................. 171 5.4.6 THORCON and IMSR ........................................................... 174 5.4.7 The history, whys, and hows of sustainable MSRs ................ 178 Chapter 6. Economics: The main reason that the USA’s nuclear power industry is currently on the ropes ............................................... 184 6.1 Generic reactor build costs ........................................................... 207 6.2 Sustainable reactor build costs ..................................................... 210 6.2.1 Materials ................................................................................ 214 6.3 Radioactive Waste management’s costs ...................................... 228 6.3.1 Radioactive Waste Treatment ................................................. 229 6.3.2 Radioactive Waste disposal .................................................... 230 6.4 How do we pay for all this change? ............................................. 236 Chapter 7. The nuclear establishment’s self-inflicted wounds ......... 239 7.1. Refusal to choose/set rational goals ............................................ 246 7.1.1. NGNP ..................................................................................... 247 7.1.2 DOE’s Savannah River Site’s MOX boondoggling ............... 250 7.1.3 DOE Hanford’s reprocessing waste treatment project’s boondoggling ................................................................................... 252 7.1.4 The “lead nuclear engineering lab’s” radwaste boondoggling .......................................................................................................... 259 7.2 Fukushima’s “nuclear disaster” .................................................... 267 7.3 The nuclear industry’s LNT-based radiation dose assumptions .. 274 7.4 ALARA (As Low Reasonably Achievable) ................................. 278 7.5 Over blown proliferation concerns ............................................... 280 Chapter 8. Root causes: “The Damned Human Race” (Mark Twain ) 282 8.1 Greed: ........................................................................................... 285 8.2 Tribalism: ...................................................................................... 289 8.3 Gullibility:..................................................................................... 294 8.4 Laziness ........................................................................................ 298 8.5 Deviousness ................................................................................. 300 8.6 Bullheadedness: ............................................................................ 303 8.6.1 “Working class” politics ......................................................... 303 8.6.2 Anti-nuclear “environmentalists” ........................................... 305 8.6.3 Hyper secrecy ......................................................................... 309 8.6.4 My own bullheadedness ......................................................... 311 8.7 Consequences ............................................................................... 312 8.7.1 INEL’s calciner’s off gas “opacity issue” .............................. 312 8.7.2 Argonne Idaho’s IFR waste management scheme. ................ 315 8.7.3 DOE’s radwaste classification system .................................... 318 8.7.4 DOE’s “ethic s training” ......................................................... 319 Chapter 9. The reasons why the Western world’s erstwhile leader in nuclear energy must “embrace change” ................................................ 320 9.1 The USA’s “middle” class’s issues .............................................. 321 9.2 The USA’s over, under, and stupid regulations ........................... 332 9.3 Why we need a Nuclear Green New Deal.................................... 342 Chapter 10. Suggestions for improvement ......................................... 344 10.1 Stop bean-counting ..................................................................... 345 10.2 Really “reorganize” DOE ........................................................... 346 10.3 Reevaluate priorities ................................................................... 348 Chapter 11. Conclusions ..................................................................... 354 Chapter 12. Homework problems ....................................................... 366 MISCELLANEOUS EXERCISES .................................................. 367 OIL SHALE ..................................................................................... 369 URANIUM RESOURCES .............................................................. 369 WIND POWER ................................................................................ 370 SOLAR HEATING RELATED EXERCISES ................................ 373 CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER ............................................ 375 MSR Nitty Gritty ............................................................................. 376 LMFBR Nitty Gritty ........................................................................ 377 OCEAN ACIDIFICATION EXERCISES ...................................... 379 WIND POWER HYDROGEN ........................................................ 380 FUEL CELL-RELATED PROBLEMS .......................................... 381 DIY computer modeling .................................................................. 382 BATTERY Nitty Gritty ................................................................... 384 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................... 385 REFERENCES ...................................................................................... 385 Chapter 13. APPENDICES ................................................................. 447 Appendix I Reprocessing ................................................................... 447 Conventional reprocessing ............................................................... 447 Future reprocessing .........................................................................