- Services
- Solutions
- Cleantech Forum events
- About us
- Contact us
Nuclear's biggest problem? Not enough scientists
February 26, 2009 - by Emma Ritch, Cleantech Group
print
reprint
A tremendous market opportunity could be opening up in components and scientists for nuclear power stations if the predictions hold true from industry leaders speaking at the Cleantech Forum XXI in San Francisco this week.
Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, chairwoman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, kicked off the talks of a nuclear renaissance by calling for new nuclear plants to be built at the site of old ones.
"Nuclear is back on the agenda," she said. "When the renaissance happens, there will be a line to get parts. ... We will need a new generation of physicists and nuclear physicists."
Avinash Patkar, chief sustainability officer at India's Tata Power, said the utility plans to increase its power generation from 2,318 MW in 2007 with no nuclear power to 25,120 MW in 2017, including 1,500 MW from nuclear power.
"Expect to see significant growth in nuclear power in the next five years," he said.
Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, said the world has to get over its "cold- fusion stigma," bringing together scientists across disciplines to focus on big problems.
Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, also a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, echoed the sentiment, saying nuclear power will again be a game-changer for energy (see What’s on your cleantech innovation wish list?).
“Something as big as the introduction of nuclear power is the introduction of nuclear power,” he said. “We need this stuff desperately and the life of the planet depends on it. The world has to get past this idea that radioactivity spreads.”
A report from Banc of America Securities and Merrill Lynch today on the Cleantech Forum declared that "nuclear is coming back into vogue with 80 percent of U.S. and 58 percent of UK citizens supporting this non-renewable but clean, baseload power."
The report noted that new nuclear technologies are safe for 50 to 70 years.
"Perhaps the biggest problem is a skills shortage," the report said. "The high energy density of nuclear (multiple millions times renewables) makes it a necessary part of the energy solution, in our view."
Copyright © 2009 Cleantech Group LLC. All rights reserved, including right of redistribution.
Coverage brought to you by
Cleantech developments making news in the past 24 hours
View the last week of cleantech developments here | Subscribe to full feed 
Comments
Honesty in presenting nuclear energy technology.
Submitted on March 5th, 2009 by Adrian Akau (not verified)“We need this stuff desperately and the life of the planet depends on it. The world has to get past this idea that radioactivity spreads.”
This is not the approach that should be taken by a Nobel Laureate. As far as I am concerned, we need this stuff like we need a hole in the head and our planet can do just fine without it. We have had numerous cover ups of accidents in the past and must accept the fact that it is a dangerous way to produce energy. There is nothing "clean" about it when the disposal of radioactive material is taken into consideration.
adrianakau2aol.com
some stupid ideas
Submitted on March 6th, 2009 by INVENTOR (not verified)a small minority of venture capitalists are funding a few stupid nuclear reactor projects. They all center around the idea that you can fill reactor with nuclear fuel and close it for a decade or two and it will run itself totally safely without humans supervision- it. Everyone knows that anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
1.) some kind of meltdown or release of radioactivity is possible.
2.) if they are unsupervised terrorists can dig tunnels and drill their way into them, and take the radioactive materials to make dirty bombs and real atomic explosives.
3.) they can bomb the underground facilities to cause a release of radioactivity.
Weak interaction low energy nuclear reactions are clean & green
Submitted on March 10th, 2009 by Lewis G. Larsen (not verified)There is a future technological alternative to fission and fusion processes (which are based on what physicists call the strong interaction) that is truly clean and 'green'--- no dangerous energetic neutrons, no deadly gamma radiation, and no production of long-lived radioactive isotopes. This new, little known nuclear energy technology is based on the weak interaction and is called low energy nuclear reactions or LENRs. The Institute of Science in Society (I-SiS), a nonprofit London, UK, environmental organization has published a number of articles on this subject that can be found at the URL: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/scienergy.php
LENRs
Submitted on March 12th, 2009 by Adrian Akau (not verified)I have read Lewis Larsen's comments on LENRs at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/LENRGE.php
and now have a much better idea of what he is talking about. It seems possible to develop LENRs as a save and clean alternative to nuclear energy as we know it today. I quote from his article:
"Collective weak interaction LENRs can occur at the interface between the chemical and nuclear energy realms. In condensed matter systems, nanoscale many-particle collective effects enable certain nuclear reactions to take place at ordinary temperatures and pressures. You don't need a fission reactor or a star to make neutrons, transmute elements, and, if the circumstances are right, release large amounts of energy."
"In weak interaction LENRs, excessive releases of nuclear binding energy are to a degree ‘bled-off' in the form of emitted neutrino photons, which carry-off substantial amounts of energy in a completely benign form, the neutrino itself, which just flies off into space without interacting with local matter. The remaining weak nuclear reaction products, the negatively charged beta particles and non-radioactive stable or weakly-radioactive unstable beta-decay isotopes, do not create dangerous, deeply penetrating radiation. In other words, LENRs can be used to develop a safe nuclear energy technology that does not create dangerous hard radiation and/or long-lived radioactive and toxic wastes."
adrianakau2aol.com
High-level online historical and technical overview of LENRs
Submitted on March 13th, 2009 by Lewis G. Larsen (not verified)Delighted that you enjoyed reading the I-SiS articles.
If you would like to see a concise (24 online Powerpoint slides) high-level historical and technical overview of LENRs, please go to the URL =
http://www.slideshare.net/lewisglarsen/lattice-energy-llchigh-level-historical-and-technical-overview-of-lenrsfeb-14-2009
According to the news
Submitted on March 23rd, 2009 by Theodore (not verified)According to the news articles I have been reading, solar and wind energy are both cheaper than nuclear right now. Why waste money on "energy density"? Nuclear power is not needed.
Post new comment