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This book was recommended by Calliban in topic "Nuclear power is safe"
The dedicated topic is intended to mesh with "Beyond Oil and Gas" to deliver a vision of harnessing atomic power on a global scale.
The target proposed for the present initiative is 1 MW of electrical power under the direct management of those who are capable, or as a virtual asset of the same value for those who are not. The intention is to insure that every person born on Earth automatically receives this benefit.
To this point, humans have demonstrated a mixed ability to manage and distribute the wealth on offer from Nature.
The premise of this set of coordinated topics is that humans are capable of doing better.
For Calliban re topic in general and 1 MW reactor in focus...
This is a follow up to the earlier post quoted here ...
Thank you (again) for the link to the Plentiful Energy book/pdf ...
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1 of: Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor: The complex history of a simple reactor
technology, with emphasis on its scientific bases for non-specialists, Till, Charles E.
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Update August 22nd at 21:00 local time ....
Someone from Amazon (or perhaps USPS) was out working on deliveries today!
"Plentiful Energy" arrived today. It is a paperback (c) 2011, with about the same dimensions and quality as "Beyond Oil" ...
I opened the book by fanning the pages, and the fan stopped at page 339 of the Afterword. I'm intending to quote the quotes printed there.
References appear on pages 334 and 335.
Appendix A begins on page 343 which continues through Page 387, where a list of references appears.
OK ... I get the picture ... References are printed at the end of each chapter, instead of in a huge collection at the back of the book.
The quote that appears on page 339 is from the work of Richard Rhodes "Nuclear Renewal: Common Sense About Energy" (1993)
Satisfying human aspirations is what our species invents technology to do. Some Americans, secure in comfortable affluence, may dream of a simpler and smaller world. However noble such a world appears to be, its hidden agenda is elitist, selfish and violent. Millions of children die every year for lack of adequate resources---clean water, food, medical care---and the development of those resources is directly dependent on energy supplies. The real world of real human beings needs more energy. With nuclear power, that energy can be generated cleanly and without destructive global warming.
The authors conclude the Afterword with these thoughts:
The passage of time has diminished neither the power nor the urgency of these words.
I note with moderate surprise that the quotation from 1993 anticipates by 30 years the present global warming emergency.
(th)
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This book is about the US programme to develop a liquid metal cooled fast reactor. The concept was largely succesful and was vandalised by the Clinton administration. The reactor used metallic uranium-transuranic zirconium alloy fuel. The spent fuel is suitable for pyroprocessing. This requires melting the fuel in a crucible and mixing with liquid cadmium. The cadmium absorbs the fission products leaving the actinides behind. Actinides are then recast into fuel pellets. This allowed reprocessing using extremely compact plant onsite. The reprocessing recycles all actinides into new fuel. This tends to reduce breeding ratio, but it does mean that no long lived actinides end up in waste streams.
Additionally, the high operating temperature of sodium cooled reactors is more compatible with passive cooling mechanisms following loss of onsite power. The IFR would have improved safety and sustainability. But there was no immiediate economic driver with the abundance of fissile fuel available in the 1990s. Examined today, with the current shortage of enriched uranium in western countries, the concept is far more attractive. But most of the people that worked on it are either retired or dead.
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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