On News of the World and Other Things

I had the chance to watch the Yes We Can YouTube video, it is still inspiring. Then I was read recent polling data published on CNN, a full quarter of the American population will miss George Walker Bush when he leaves office in three weeks. Let me see, 25% of 300 million is 75 million people approve of the disaster that George Dubbya Bush calls his presidency. What planet are these people on?

In December of 2001, I went to China for the first time and met my future in-laws, my soon to be father-in-law asked why I disliked Bush, there were already so many reasons I did not even know where to begin, that was before the war in Iraq, before Katrina, before the Sub-prime meltdown, but not before the disastrous trillion dollar tax cut to the richest people in the World, the mishandling of the attacks of Sept. 11, the backing out of at least two major international treaties, Kyoto and the ABM treaty of 1972. (Alright the US did not actually withdraw from ABM until 2002, but the writing was on the wall the day Donald Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defence.)

Anyway speaking of withdrawing from International treaties, I had an idea I wanted to throw out into the open, but it is on Nuclear power and I am not sure there are all that many people who know, or care enough, so a good many people may want to just move on, but for anyone who can follow, this might prove a good idea.

Nuclear power is a good source of energy in that it does not release huge amounts of green house gasses, but it does create waste product that will remain radioactive for a very, very long time. In addition, a normal nuclear power plant will produce Plutonium as natural byproduct of the fission process, Plutonium can be reused later in a power plant, or can be made into weapons. Another problem with Nuclear power is that the price of Uranium, the normal fuel for nuclear power is subject to all the volatility of regular commodities. (Obviously physical plant safety is a concern but that can be mitigated through well designed plants, modern designs have much promise in this area.)

So it seems to me that the problem with nuclear power is two fold, input and output. Well I need to cover some physics for my idea to make sense, there are, to my knowledge three different potential fuels for nuclear power, Thorium, Uranium and Plutonium.

The major problem with Thorium as a fuel is that it requires a two stage process to make it usable, first regular Thorium 232 has to be bombarded with a slow neutron then nuclear beta decay converts that Thorium 233 into Protactinium 233 which in turn decays into Uranium 233 which is fissionable. At least Thorium 232 is the most common isotope of Thorium. Uranium has two major isotopes, U238 which is not fissionable with slow neutrons and U235 which is fissionable, U235 comprises about 0.711% of all Uranium, 238 makes up almost all of the rest, about 99.284%, separation of fissionable 235 from unfissionable 238 is a costly difficult proposition. Finally there is Plutonium which is a synthetic atom, it is typically created by bombarding U238 with a slow neutron which creates U239 which beta decays into Neptunium 239 which beta decays into Plutonium 239, which is fissionable.

If you did not follow the above paragraph no worries, the short is fuel suitable for a nuclear power plant is difficult to come by. But that is nothing compared with what comes out when you are done.

Something in the neighbourhood of 1% of the fissionable fuel that goes into a reactor is actually used, the other 99% is removed along with the 'ashes' of the 1% and all of it, ashes and unburnt fuel is considered waste. The reason is as the fuel is 'burned' waste products start diluting the fuel, the waste products have a large neutron cross section which means that many of the neutrons which should be splitting fuel and making more energy get absorbed by the waste and produce nothing of value. So after a period of 12 to 24 months inside a reactor core the fuel, now very radioactive, is removed and put in a waste tank under the reactor for a period of about 30 years, after 30 years the most radioactive materials in the fuel have decayed and what remains although still very toxic is sufficiently harmless to be stored above ground or in some mountain. (Sadly the stuff that is left - ironically mostly Plutonium - is going to remain toxic for thousands of years.)

So we have two problems, fuel is a rare commodity and waste is something we will be stuck with for tens (or hundreds) of thousands of years.

Well why not chemically separate the unused fuel from the waste product? Heck, lets add some cheap Thorium to the exterior of the reactor, as it gets bombarded by escaping neutrons it will be converted into Uranium and then we can chemically separate the Uranium from the Thorium and get even more fuel?

Well in theory that is a great idea, the problem is chemical separation is banned by international treaty. It turns out that is a great way to build a bomb, build a small reactor, make some waste, extract the plutonium from the waste, build a bomb. Much easier than all that nasty mucking about with heavy Uranium isotopes.

So here is my idea, we have waste that has lots of useful fuel in it, we have fuel that could be made even more valuable if we could just reprocess waste. Well the issue is, we need a place where fuel could be reprocessed without concern that the reprocessed fuel would be made into bombs, oh and that place should already have lots of experience with Nuclear power for purely peaceful purposes, like, oh I don't know, say Canada?

It has been the avowed policy of this nation to use nuclear power only for peaceful purposes, we have had the technology to build bombs as long ago as the early 60's, maybe even earlier, yet we choose not to. Could an exception be made, that all nuclear products, retired cold-war era bombs as well as spent fuel be sent to Canada where in some remote facility it would be reprocessed into a fuel suitable for nuclear reactors? The reprocessed fuel would be sold to power generators all over the world, the remaining high level waste products could then be stored for the hundred or two hundred years in the geologically ultrastable Canada Shield.

Such an international program could solve multiple issues in one stroke, the verifiable complete destruction of cold war weapons, the removal of weapons proliferation issue, the reduction in nuclear waste products, the reducing of the cost of nuclear fuel, oh and it would also create quite a few skilled jobs in Northern Ontario or Manitoba or wherever the facility was located.

I am not sure if this is the solution to our energy problems, but I think it is a better idea than burning "clean coal" or oil. Obviously I think some discussion should take place on this matter, I wonder if I am the only one who feels this way?