ADVANCED NUCLEAR ENERGY IS THE SOLUTION
January 18, 2010
Exclusive: Advanced Nuclear Energy – The Solution to the Malthusian Prediction
Don Petersen, Ph.D., Bill Stratton, Ph.D.
Thomas Malthus’ 1798, â€Essay on the Principle of Population,†predicts that population growth, spurred by societal improvements, eventually will outstrip natural resources leading to universal famine, and the demise of civilization – population growth is exponential, while growth of food production is linear. For 200 years, his dire prediction has been forestalled by a parade of technological accomplishments based on cheap, dense fossil energy, that has provided astonishing, albeit unequal advances in man’s comfort and well-being.
Now, cheap, energy dense fossil fuels are becoming scarcer. Readily available oil is estimated to last approximately 40 years, natural gas, somewhat longer, and coal reserves, at the projected consumption rate, will last about 150 years. But emissions from man’s burning of fossil fuels are thought by many to be the root cause of current global warming. The EPA has declared carbon dioxide an endangerment, and a misguided and alarmed society, given the chance, would vote for carbon dioxide elimination. Regardless of whether fossil fuel emissions cause global warming, we will continue to deplete fossil resources, and eventually must seek alternative ways to satisfy energy demand – we must turn to technology again and ask what alternatives afford the best chance of fulfilling future energy demand to avert the Malthusian prediction.
Renewable energy, basically the energy received each day from the sun in the form of sunlight, wind, waves, and photosynthesis by green plants, can be collected on a worldwide basis, most easily over land but also over water. The total collectable, renewable energy, perhaps as much as several terrawatts, assuming theoretical collection efficiencies, would contribute to the 18 terrawatts that a population of 9.4 billion people will demand in 2050 – but little more. Intermittency and the woefully diffuse nature of incident solar energy requiring huge wind and solar collector areas make the claim of adequate, renewable energy, in all its variations, unrealistic until an enormous energy storage breakthrough, undreamed of now, occurs. Without storage, it is at best, a partial solution of uncertain size and economic return.
Nuclear energy, mostly from light water reactors that now provide about 15 percent of the world’s electricity, depends on fissioning a rare isotope of uranium, U-235. The U-235 to fuel light water reactors (LWR) is estimated to last about 75 years but the debate about recycling spent, light water reactor fuel, complicates the longevity estimate. Other objections related to mining, safety, waste disposal, and proliferation because of plutonium accumulation, are fixtures of the current technology, and will not go away until a much more capable and efficient fast neutron technology is adopted so that what we now call waste can be burned to produce electricity. Storing or burying spent LWR fuel does not solve the disposal/proliferation problem – transuranics must, and can be eliminated. Hence, expanded contemporary nuclear technology may be used to satisfy early increases in electricity demand, but it is not an option for the long term.
The first useable nuclear electricity was produced at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, by a sodium cooled breeder reactor in December, 1951 – the technology is not new, but of all the choices between renewables and advanced nuclear with recycle, nuclear is the only one that can be ramped up fast enough to keep pace with expanding demand. Several other countries are actively pursuing advanced fast neutron reactor engineering with the aim of productively burning all of the uranium isotopes. Thorium –about twice as abundant as uranium in the earth’s crust – also can be used to fuel breeder reactors different from current designs. Using all the uranium and thorium is the only approach that guarantees vastly increased, reliable, energy availability well into the next millennium. Advantages are sufficient energy, a comparatively tiny footprint, an enormous increase in a less complicated fuel supply, and much less demanding waste disposal. Proliferation worries are reduced because spent fuel does not accumulate –everything, including the plutonium and other transuranics in stored, contemporary spent LWR fuel, and dismantled weapons, burns, and only short-lived fission products remain. The vitrified fission products decay to background in 300 years, rather than thousands. If anthropogenic global warming ever turns out to be real, compared to the cost of inundation of coastal cities, the cost of clean, advanced nuclear power is peanuts.
Conservation measures suffer because population growth quickly absorbs the energy savings and with renewable technologies currently being pursued, severe contraction of lifestyle is inevitable. Without some curb, Malthus’ prediction finally is slated to come true sometime after 2050. To dodge the prediction again, only advanced nuclear technology is capable of providing the enormous and continually expanding amount of energy needed in time to cushion the impact of population growth and avoid economic collapse. Without it, human reproduction must cease now. If there is a silver lining in this cloud, it is that we know how on both counts.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Don Petersen, Ph.D., writes for the Los Alamos Education Group and is past Leader of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Life Sciences Division. Since Operation Desert Shield, he has served on the Deputy Undersecretary of the Army for Operational Research advisory panel for development of chemical and biological weapons detection and protection equipment. Bill Stratton, Ph.D., writes for the Los Alamos Education Group. Now retired, he spent his career at the Los Alamos National Laboratory working on reactor safety and while a member of the working staff of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, was instrumental in explaining why no radioactivity escaped from the reactor core. He has consulted for nuclear utilities, reactor vendors, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
Comments are closed.
