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Nuclear Power without the Radioactive Waste?!?

In his recent letter to Barack Obama, James Hansen (of NASA's Goddard Space Centre Fame) encouraged the President to develop a new form of nuclear power. It would generate little waste, would be 99% efficient, use existing waste as fuel and reduce the chance of nuclear proliferation. Is this a pipe dream or soon to be reality?

A Letter on Climate Change

James Hansen is a world-renowned expert on Climate Change and one of the most publicly vocal figures on the urgency to solve the problem. He has recently written open letters to the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, on the need to prevent all new coal fired power stations from being built (in reference to the planned Kingsnorth Power Station planned for Southern England).

His letter to Mr. Obama was a prescription, of sorts. Energy efficiency, renewable energy and smart grids were all listed as being crucial to reducing US greenhouse gas emissions. However, nuclear power is not something usually promoted by an environmentalist.

Current Nuclear Power

In its current form, nuclear power is expensive, dangerous, unreliable and promotes the development of nuclear weapons. However, Hansen's suggestion was not to pour money into the construction of new nuclear power stations in their current form, but to develop new technology which removes many of the problems currently hampering the nuclear industry. This new technology is known as 4th Generation Nuclear Power.

There are many current plans to build 'a new generation of nuclear power plants', in various parts of the world. These plans are for what is known as 3rd Generation Nuclear Power. 1st Generation Nuclear Power Plants were the prototype plants built for research purposes after the 2nd World War, with the 2nd generation plants being the commercial power plants currently coming to the end of their life. However, 3rd generation plants only offer a slight improvement in efficiency and safety over their 2nd generation counterparts. They still produce highly dangerous nuclear waste that will need to be stored in sealed, indestructible containers for the next 5000 years. They also waste most of the energy they produce and rely on rare nuclear fuels which require a lot of energy to enrich. Finally, any country that wants to build them will have the ability to make weapons grade plutonium.

4th Generation Nuclear Power

Fourth Generation Nuclear Power is different. It uses Thorium, rather than Uranium, as its primary fuel. Thorium is currently found in vast quantities in various places, such as the waste heaps produced by coal-fired power stations as well as on hundreds of miles of Thorium-sand beaches in India and, most interestingly, in nuclear waste. Thus, 4th Generation Nuclear Power has the potential to burn harmful waste products from the nuclear and coal industries, as well as being commonly and cheaply found in areas easily accessible to Asia's new Superpowers: India and China. With the obvious need to encourage both India and China to reduce their emissions, this makes 4th Generation Nuclear Power an excellent long-term choice for electricity generation.

Funding Needed

Many in the industry point out that 4th Generation Nuclear Power will not be ready until 2030. However, in Hansen's letter to Obama, he pointed out that the "time needed could be much abbreviated with a Presidential initiative and Congressional support". Indeed, South Korea is already interested in constructing a small scale 4th Generation Nuclear Power Plant based on existing technology.

Averting Future Disaster

Is this the Holy Grail of clean energy? Almost. When Nuclear Fusion eventually becomes commercialised (which is not expected to happen for another 50-70 years), our energy problems will be severely eased. However, over the next few decades, when we have become as energy efficient as possible and expanded renewable energy to its maximum, we will be left with a problem. The problem is an energy gap known as 'base-load energy'.

Base-load energy refers to the minimum amount of energy that needs to be supplied constantly to the grid. As renewable energy sources can only produce electricity at certain times (e.g. when the wind is blowing or when the sun is shining), this base-load needs to come from somewhere else. At the moment, the only likely candidates are 3rd generation nuclear and coal-fired power stations. However, these forms of generation could leave us with enormous problems in terms of climate change, radioactive waste and nuclear proliferation. 4th Generation Nuclear, on the other hand, could fill that gap very nicely without any of the negative issues.

Bring on the funding Mr. Obama!

Further Reading:

James Hansen's Letter to Barack Obama: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/01/letter-to-barack-obama

Thorium Reactors Explained on The Oil Drum: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4971

4th Generation Nuclear Reactors on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

Image Credit: U.S. Department of Energy
Copyright: Public domain (government-created document)