Nuclear phased-out, timed-out or simple not well
understood
June 26th 2011, By Luis A. Loureiro
As well as
Three Miles Island Nuclear Power Plant accident at Unit 2 was a “before” and
“after” in nuclear regulations, nuclear design revision and worldwide
architect-engineering practices modification, another exclusively civilian used
Nuclear Power Plant brought us the sadness of something not completely seen
before.
Indeed,
Japan’s energy angry has become more and more anxiously required for sustaining
its own industrial race in a world where other similar races run the same, or
worst way.
We can see
through transparent documents, explanations and Government orders how difficult
such an event has been and will be for Japanese population.
But
information is not available the same way in general, we ought to navigate
sometime very deep waters and taking a short breath, submerge again and again
for perhaps nothing to get.
There are
one pre Fukushima and other post Fukushima fact in the same way we can say one
pre BP Mexico’ s Gulf spillage and one post spillage, one pre Cold
War Broken Arrow accident’s history and one post Cold War, one pre Kurk’s
Submarine accident and one post Kurk’s accident.
But going
to seven billion population figures before the end of the year has pointing us
our problems are far to be resolved.
Other
certainly very hard enough situations compete with our intentions to better
provide cheap, easy and costless energy for go on growing more quickly than we’ve done, such us for example
Solar or man produced EMP over dense territories, peak oil and related dreams
for some more decades of easy oil and coal extraction, climate change, soil and
water depletion, etc. Some people
think Nuclear Fusion will be the best. Indeed in some 45-65 years, but today
ITER – IGNITOR competitive discussions more retard than fuel future cheap
energy production.
A lot of
Materials Research for hardener known metal claddings and blankets, as well as
very energetic and electrically interacting hot plasma contention is going to be resolved in the coming future,
independently of which hot source combination of energetic lasers, radio beam
and ohmic heating be used to.
Men has
resolved to get some Tritium for Nuclear bombs but has not resolved how to get
some kilos during some months for ignition and first operational phase of any
Fusion breeder Plant to be commercially available some day.
At this
point I can think about PHWR operators training to overpass accident conditions with gaseous Tritium from
irradiated heavy water used as neutron moderator and coolant.
Must we
phase-out Fusion alternative because we couldn’t get this energy till today?
Common
sense may say us: please, insist!
Now some easy
available bulk water resources may turn
most of expectations to Hydropower. Again, man learned to be cautious. Great
hydro dam sites open our mind for new challenges: a lot of people to be
displaced, cultural sites and productive resources could become underwater,
some environmental changes such as water temperature modification and then
local climate modification too, potential seismic disturbances, and more.
Energy is
not free, we ought to pay something for it and exercise our choosing option
among different approaches.
Then,
energy outage and energy angry are more related to developed countries with a
high increase in per capita energy consumption than not yet developed and still
developing countries (will they succeed?)
Present
energy mix considers fossil fuels sources in the range of 85 %. In respect to
electrical generation appears to be a
16% to 20 or 25% depending of the considered world region. From this figure,
only 14% comes from nuclear fission applied to electric generation, just only 1
to 2 percent of the whole mix, though in accident discussions News Papers and
TV spaces comments are not proportional to these figures.
Our post
Fukushima prognosis could be quite different if you consider developed
countries, emerging economies and developing countries.
Will all
resign to nuclear power generation? No if they have an ambiguous civil-military
interest in going on attending this technology trough all the industrial and
economic field of the civilization. And emerging economies which need more and
more energy without access to very deep oil extraction and nuclear dreams not
too well matured will do? Indeed nuclear development culture is quite more than
a cold war era assumption: a great portion of industrial new materials field,
scientific research, automated calculus programs, control and instrumentation and technological developments. Many people want to be very close to this
“ticket to the future” and “ticket to participate” technology.
Not only
base energy you can get from nuclear fission, an attractive development tools
basket with all kind of applications mainly in technology and defense
development systems, regulations, QA and QC rules, applied sciences, security
and harsh environments management, home’s risk assessment, specialized computational
codes and earth related sciences applied as well.
At the time
there are problems you get . We would like to think our world is learning
everyday to responsibly handling
nuclear power application consequences..
Most
nations prefer to adopt a non-nuclear (yet) position and to look from the
neighboring side what’s happening subsiding electrical generation with non-renewable mix of (till today) easy to extract energy sources.
Others prefer to just buy electricity trough interconnected grids to satisfy an
important portion of the demand, and
insist in exploring renewable such as
wind an solar options.
If we talk
about wind, a necessary visit to Risoe National Laboratories in Denmark (near
Roskilde) will let you make a real experience about . If you do, you still will
look for other complementary energy sources for the stability of your
electrical grid including such as diverse sources as you could. Electromagnetic
“white pollution”, birds migration control, telecommunications noise interference, main turbine components replace
and other defense related issues also account to.
Solar has a
military antecedent with the so called Solar Satellite in the 60’s and then the
reception of huge non-ionizing
radiations over dedicated surfaces on earth. Then the atmospheric consequences
of such irradiation, the electromagnetic disturbance of our electromagnetic
field around us and the human temptation to go farther in defense applications.
Solar panels may consume a lot of energy to manufacture them and need a complementary batery backup for grid
connection.
Solar sail
was demonstrated by Japanese satellite Ikaros and probably will be
complementary used for space navigation in presence of ion wind..
For the
first moment you need to use chemicals in elaborated liquid and solid
propellants to overcome the gravitation attraction. Solar you need for
electrical chargers where no other energy source be available, or other
complementary use.
Also for
concentrated huge solar oven for industrial applications with liquid metal or
molten salt transmission of heat.
After
Fukushima, with estimated more than one year to reach cold shutdown , some very
radioactive hot points distributed over the terrain where no explanation could
be elaborated yet, people irradiated close to non-stochastic radiation limits, thousand of tons of
contaminated water spilling to a great
daily rate, protection of workers in almost 99 % of water heated vapor environment
and a society feeling that not all was
explained before… World become more cautious?
Some
economies need the base source energy only nuclear fission power can provide
today, at risk. Old Soviet era territories, China, India, Korea, some Arabic
countries and developing countries such apart of Japan as Brazil, Argentina,
and others, are retarding, not excluding, the fission nuclear option.
United
States and Russia, China and India, Pakistan and Iran, every one with its own
arguments, can’t go back because the inexorable increase in energy demand and
nations’ s prestige forces them to go beyond.
From these
requirements and the convenient mix of options mankind will get the impulse to
survive the next 55 to 65 years until Nuclear Fusion be available.
Probably
when men could built a semi-permanent base in the Moon, Mars -or other places distant from our
Sun-, will sustain nuclear fission reactions as well as radioisotopes
electrical current production as well as solar advanced applications to expand human civilization all over their dreams
with more experienced and captious developed tools.
I hope so
By
Luis A. Loureiro
Montevideo,
June 26th, 2011
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