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--------------------- 2434 - NUCLEAR ENERGY
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- Nuclear Energy is ready for a comeback in the US after 30 years in dormancy. The US does not have the money, not the expertise, not the engineers, not the teachers but other nations do and we are teaming up to make a nuclear comeback. 26 requests to build nuclear power plants have been submitted to the US government from General Electric, Westinghouse and France. And, they are likely to be approved. Here is why:
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- Nuclear power is producing electricity at 1.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. PG&E is charging me 11.4 cents per kilowatt-hour today. We have 8 nuclear power plants in California. We require 259,365 billion kilowatt-hours per year to run our state.
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---------------- 16 to 20% comes from nuclear
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---------------- 31% comes from natural gas
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---------------- 20% comes from hydro
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---------------- 20% comes from coal
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---------------- 4.9% comes from geothermal
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---------------- 0.4% comes from solar
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---------------- 1.5% comes from wind
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- The US has 103 nuclear power plants, over 20 years old, that produce 20% of our nations electricity. There are 400 nuclear power plants in the World. France gets 80% of its electricity form nuclear. Japan gets 50%. The US is operating at 92% capacity to produce the 20% of our electrical needs.
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- We have not built a nuclear facility in the past 20 years. Every one of our nuclear plants is different, requiring different engineering expertise to run them. These plants were built during evolving technologies and changing government regulations. Every one of France’s nuclear plants are exactly the same. So, the same operators can move from one to another.
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- The biggest improvement in modern nuclear power plants is the recycling of spent fuel. Recycling extracts more uranium and plutonium from the spent fuel rods. The extracted plutonium is mixed with U235 and reused as new fuel rods. This means that spent fuel does not need to stored underground where it remains radioactive for thousands, or millions, of years.
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- By using recycled fuel rods Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the only site in the US where radioactive rods can be stored underground, will be the only nuclear storage we will need. If we did not have recycling we would eventually need a dozen Yucca Mountains. With recycling we will only need one Yucca Mountain and the fuel rods will only be radioactive for 700 to 1000 years, not millions of years.
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- Compared to coal there is very little waste even before recycling. When U235 uranium atoms split in fission reactors, each releases 200 million electron-volts. A fission reactor gets 82,000,000 million joules of energy per kilogram of fuel. A 1000 megawatt power plant will only require 3.2 kilograms / day of fuel.
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- A fusion reactor gets 340,000,000 million joules of energy per kilogram of fuel. Each fusion reaction combining 2 atoms releases 17.6 million electron-volts. A 1000 megawatt power plant will only require 0.6 kilograms of fuel per day. However, we do not expect to have practical fusion reactors operational for another 30 to 50 years. Fusion is a hard technology to make work.
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- A coal power plant only gets 29 million joules of energy per kilogram of coal. (Note the massive difference in energy density) . A 1000 megawatt power plant would need 7,300.000 kilograms of fuel per day ( That’s 8,047 tons per day showing up in railroad cars.) 52% of California’s greenhouse gases come from coal burning.
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- The next big reason for nuclear is that it is needed in order to usher in the hydrogen economy. A nuclear power plant produces electricity and heat. That is exactly what is needed in a hydrogen production plant.
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- Instead of those giant cooling towers reaching into the sky we should operate a hydrogen production plant nearby. The hydrogen thermal chemical reaction requires 1000 C and nuclear power plants produce that as excess heat. Nuclear is not portable and will not work to run automobiles. But, the hydrogen plant next door is ideal to fuel automobiles creating an exhaust of H2O, not CO2.
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- Another important reason to go nuclear is it is ideal to meet growing electricity needs of developing countries. The GNEP, Global Nuclear Energy Program, a cold war result that is a treaty designed to prevent the proliferation of nuclear technology for weapons of mass destruction.
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- The nuclear countries have agreed to give the developing countries nuclear enclosed power plants and sell them the electricity they want without their acquiring nuclear technology themselves. These 300 megawatt modern power plants use safe 3 to 5% enriched U235 fuel and only need to be refueled every 20 years. ( A crude bomb requires 20% enriched U235, a modern bomb requires 90% enrichment).
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- Modern nuclear power plants are smaller and need only be refueled every 20 years compared to our current plants that must be refueled every 2 years. The modern plants are safe with automatic shut downs requiring no human intervention.
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- Pebble reactors in Japan and South Africa have fuel encased in ceramic pebbles that are impossible to melt even if the core goes out of control and tries a melt down. The pebbles just safely roll out on the floor.
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- The smaller modern power plants can be built on existing nuclear sites. No new nuclear sites need to be commissioned. The US will start building 20 plants by 2020. GE, Westinghouse, and France have already submitted 26 separate proposals for licenses to build plants. By recycling the spent fuel Yucca Mountain that has already been commissioned need be the only underground nuclear spent fuel rod storage we will need in the US.
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- Jasmina Vujic was the professor from UC Berkeley who gave this lecture. She is originally from Serbia (Yugoslavia) , graduated from Budapest, got her masters and PhD from Michigan State and now is department head of Berkeley’s nuclear engineering. Her nuclear engineering students in Berkeley already have jobs before they graduate.
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- Westinghouse is hiring 400 and France is hiring 300 engineers. Nuclear engineer salaries are among the highest in industry. The only need to get these investments off the ground is government guarantees for stability in regulations that will allow a predictable business plan to turn a profit building nuclear power plants.
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- The 400 nuclear plants in the World will grow by 168 by 2020:
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-------------- China -------------------------- 35
-------------- India --------------------------- 24
-------------- Russia--------- -----------------23
-------------- US --------- --------------------20
-------------- Japan, Korea, Taiwan-------- 19
-------------- Europe------------------------- 12
-------------- S. Africa--------- ---------------9
-------------- Latin America----------------- 4
-------------- Canada --------- ----------------4
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- Nuclear is back. It can be safe and clean. It can be an investment that ushers in the hydrogen economy that will totally change the infrastructure of US transportation. Politically it will free us from foreign oil and the global warming greenhouse gases it produces.
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- What we need most is smart people. We need smart politicians that have the ethics to do what is right for the nation. We need teachers, we need students in engineering. Not just nuclear engineers, materials engineers, chemical engineers, automobile engineers, civil engineers, environmental engineers.
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- Nuclear can be a new era for many, if educated, good people have it and not the extremists who want to blackmail the world with the power of nuclear bombs. That is the reason we are still boycotting Iran.
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- August 19, 2019. 701
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--------------------- Monday, August 19, 2019 -------------------------
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