Why nuclear power will never ever supply the world’s energy needs

By Carmen Lillard On Jan 30, 2020

nuclear power plant — Nuclear power plant in Dukovany, Czech Republic. Image credit: Petr Adamek.

(PhysOrg. com) — The 440 industrial nuclear reactors in use around the world are presently assisting to lessen our intake of fossil fuels, but how much larger can nuclear power get? In an analysis to be published in a future problem of the Proceedings of the IEEE, Derek Abbott, Teacher of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia, has concluded that nuclear power can not be globally scaled to supply the worlds energy requires for many reasons. The results recommend that were most likely better off investing in other energy services that are truly scalable.

As Abbott notes in his research study, global power consumption today is about 15 terawatts (TW). Currently, the worldwide nuclear power supply capability is only 375 gigawatts (GW). In order to examine the large-scale limitations of nuclear power, Abbott estimates that to supply 15 TW with nuclear only, we would requirement about 15,000 nuclear reactors. In his analysis, Abbott explores the effects of structure, operating, and decommissioning 15,000 reactors on the Earth, looking at aspects such as the amount of land required, radioactive waste, accident rate, risk of proliferation into weapons, uranium abundance and extraction, and the exotic metals utilized to construct the reactors themselves.

A nuclear power station is resource-hungry and, apart from the fuel, utilizes numerous uncommon metals in its building and construction, Abbott informed PhysOrg. com. The dream of a utopia where the world is powered off fission or blend reactors is merely unattainable. Even a supply of as little as 1 TW stretches resources substantially.

His findings, some of which are based on the results of previous studies, are summarized below.

Land and location: One nuclear reactor plant needs about 20.5 km² (7.9 mi²) of land to accommodate the nuclear power station itself, its exclusion zone, its enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure. Second of all, nuclear reactors requirement to be located near a enormous body of coolant water, but away from thick population zones and natural disaster zones. Just discovering 15,000 places on Earth that meet these requirements is extremely challenging.

Lifetime: Every nuclear power station requires to be decommissioned after 40 -60 years of operation due to neutron embrittlement – cracks that develop on the metal surface areas due to radiation. If nuclear stations need to be replaced every 50 years on average, then with 15,000 nuclear power stations, one station would requirement to be constructed and another decommissioned somewhere in the world every day. Currently, it takes 6 -12 years to develop a nuclear station, and up to 20 years to decommission one, making this rate of replacement unrealistic.

Nuclear waste: Although nuclear technology has actually been around for 60 years, there is still no widely concurred mode of disposal. Its uncertain whether burying the spent fuel and the spent reactor vessels (which are also extremely radioactive) might cause radioactive leakage into groundwater or the environment by means of geological motion.

Accident rate: To date, there have been 11 nuclear mishaps at the level of a complete or partial core-melt. These mishaps are not the small accidents that can be avoided with improved security technology; they are rare occasions that are not even possible to model in a system as complex as a nuclear station, and arise from unforeseen paths and unpredictable situations (such as the Fukushima mishap). Thinking about that these 11 mishaps took place throughout a cumulated overall of 14,000 reactor-years of nuclear operations, scaling up to 15,000 reactors would imply we would have a significant accident someplace in the world every month.

Proliferation: The more nuclear power stations, the greater the possibility that materials and competence for making nuclear weapons might proliferate. Although reactors have proliferation resistance procedures, preserving accountability for 15,000 reactor sites worldwide would be almost impossible.

Uranium abundance: At the existing rate of uranium intake with conventional reactors, the world supply of practical uranium, which is the most typical nuclear fuel, will last for 80 years. Scaling intake up to 15 TW, the practical uranium supply will last for less than 5 years. (Viable uranium is the uranium that exists in a high sufficient ore concentration so that extracting the ore is financially warranted.)

Uranium extraction from seawater: Uranium is most frequently mined from the Earths crust, however it can likewise be extracted from seawater, which contains large quantities of uranium (3.3 ppb, or 4.6 trillion kg). In theory, that amount would last for 5,700 years utilizing conventional reactors to supply 15 TW of power. (In fast breeder reactors, which extend the use of uranium by a aspect of 60, the uranium might last for 300,000 years. However, Abbott argues that these reactors intricacy and expense makes them uncompetitive.) Moreover, as uranium is extracted, the uranium concentration of seawater decreases, so that greater and greater amounts of water are needed to be processed in order to extract the very same quantity of uranium. Abbott determines that the volume of seawater that would need to be processed would end up being economically not practical in much less than 30 years.

Exotic metals: The nuclear containment vessel is made of a range of exotic uncommon metals that control and include the nuclear response: hafnium as a neutron absorber, beryllium as a neutron reflector, zirconium for cladding, and niobium to alloy steel and make it last 40 -60 years versus neutron embrittlement. Drawing out these metals raises issues including expense, sustainability, and environmental impact. In addition, these metals have many competing commercial uses; for example, hafnium is utilized in microchips and beryllium by the semiconductor market. If a nuclear reactor is constructed every day, the international supply of these unique metals needed to construct nuclear containment vessels would quickly run down and create a mineral resource crisis. This is a new argument that Abbott puts on the table, which locations resource limitations on all future-generation nuclear reactors, whether they are fueled by thorium or uranium.

As Abbott notes, lots of of these very same issues would afflict combination reactors in addition to fission reactors, even though commercial blend is still likely a long way off.

Of course, not many nuclear advocates are calling for a complete nuclear utopia, in which nuclear power materials the entire worlds energy needs. However numerous nuclear advocates suggest that we need to produce 1 TW of power from nuclear energy, which may be feasible, at least in the brief term. Nevertheless, if one divides Abbotts figures by 15, one still discovers that 1 TW is hardly practical. Therefore, Abbott argues that, if this technology can not be basically scaled more than 1 TW, possibly the exact same financial investment would be better invested on a totally scalable technology.

Due to the cost, intricacy, resource requirements, and incredible issues that hang over nuclear power, our investment dollars would be more sensibly put in other places, Abbott stated. Every dollar that goes into nuclear power is dollar that has been diverted from helping the rapid uptake of a safe and scalable option such as solar thermal.

Solar thermal gadgets harness the Suns energy to produce heat that develops steam that turns a turbine to create electricity. Solar thermal innovation avoids lots of of the scalability problems dealing with nuclear technology. For instance, although a solar thermal farm requires a little more land location than the equivalent nuclear power infrastructure, it can be located in unused desert areas. It likewise uses much safer, more plentiful products. Many importantly, solar thermal can be scaled to produce not just 15 TW, however hundreds of TW if it would ever be required.

However, the most significant issue with solar thermal technology is cloudy days and nighttime. Abbott plans to examine a number of storage solutions for this intermittency issue, which also pesters other sustainable energy services such as wind power, in a future study. In the shift period, he recommends that the dual-use of natural gas with solar thermal farms is the pathway to building our future energy facilities.

Lack of fuel may limit US nuclear power growth

More information:
Derek Abbott. Is nuclear power globally scalable? Proceedings of the IEEE. To be released.

Citation:
Why nuclear power will never ever supply the world’s energy needs (2011, May 11)
retrieved 30 January 2020
from https://phys. org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy. html

This document is topic to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of personal study or research, no
part might be replicated without the composed permission. The material is supplied for information functions only.