www.thenewsstar.com
Tue, Aug 18, 09
By Ron Thompson who has served on the engineering faculty at Louisiana Tech.
"This is like déjà vu all over again." Yogi Berra said it, and, sure enough, here we go again.
One of the advantages of being a professor emeritus is you have been around a while. I remember when we had an oil crisis and, President Carter established the goal of energy independence. Renewable energy sources were going to be developed rapidly. He even put solar cells on the White House roof.
Here we are more than 30 years and billions of dollars later, and the total amount of solar, wind and geothermal energy was 1.3% of the Primary Energy Production by Source in 2008, according to the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. Solar, wind and geothermal sources will not replace our dependence on foreign oil, ever.
Global energy demands are increasing exponentially. Burning more fossil fuel is not a viable solution. An inescapable fact of burning fossil fuels is that for every 12 pounds of carbon burned, 44 pounds of carbon dioxide are produced. Another inescapable fact is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been increasing exponentially since the mid-1800s. It is possible that man's activities can change the atmospheric conditions of the entire planet.
Nuclear science is my field. As director of the Nuclear Center at Louisiana Tech University, I have had the opportunity to study the nuclear fuel cycle in depth. I have followed the flow of uranium from the largest uranium mine in the world in Namibia, through the gas centrifuges in the Netherlands, to the Waterford III nuclear energy plant in Louisiana, and finally, to the Yucca Mountain Storage Site in Nevada.
As a radiation safety officer, I examined the radiation safety procedures throughout this cycle. I can say with certainty the nuclear fuel cycle in this country has more safeguards and results in less harm to people and the environment than any other fuel we use today.
Nuclear reactors now have many successful years of operation and have a proven safety record. The challenge we face today is what to do with the used fuel after it is removed from a reactor. We have invested $6.5 billion in developing the Yucca Mountain site as a geological repository. Unfortunately, President Obama has ruled out this site primarily because of the opposition by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. As much as I disagreed with this action, it may produce the opportunity to do what I believe to be the best solution.
The best solution is to separate the fuel and waste through a reprocessing cycle. The used fuel from a reactor contains about 5% radioactive waste and 95% nuclear fuel. The most dangerous radioactive wastes with the highest specific activity are short lived and decay to stable elements. Longer lived radionuclides can be transmuted into shorter lived isotopes. Advertisement
The long-lived fuel will be separated and returned to a reactor and burned. This fuel will help meet our energy needs and reduce the billions of dollars we are sending into a very unstable Middle East for oil. Since 1983, we have been paying one-tenth of a penny per kW hour of nuclear-generated electricity to pay for the disposal of this used fuel. This disposal fund has now grown to $30 billion. We have the money, the technology and the need.
We need an informed people who can inspire the political will to get the job done. The administration and Congress must do something to eliminate our dependency of foreign oil. We can replace this foreign oil with our used nuclear fuel. It is an extremely valuable resource. It just might save the planet.
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