The conclusion of scientists at the recent Symposium of Desalination and Water Re-use in Trombay, India, was that nuclear power is the only technology presently available which can provide the freshwater that a growing world population will need, without depleting fossil energy resources, according to the International Journal of Nuclear Desalination.

B.M. Misra, the co-editor of the Journal, notes that 3.5 billion people are predicted to face severe water shortages by the year 2025 because the supposedly cost-effective solar, wind, and wave power approaches to desalination “are not viable” for large-scale freshwater production.

In his preface to the issue, P.K. Terawi from the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) wrote that “Water-borne diseases cost the Indian economy 73 million working days a year,” and “many of these diseases can be prevented by safe drinking water.” He also noted that two million children now die a year from water-borne diseases, and that more than half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients with these diseases.

S.S. Verma, of the Department of Physics at SLIET in Punjab, reported that small floating nuclear plants could be sited off-shore near densely populated coastal areas, to provide cheap electricity while powering a desalination plant with their excess heat. “Companies are already in the process of developing a special desalination platform for attachment to Floating Nuclear Power Plants,” he said.

Another new approach reported by A. Raha and colleagues at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre is to use Low-Temperature Evaporation for desalination, which could make use of low-pressure steam or low-quality waste heat from a nuclear power plant. Safety, reliability, and viable economics have already been demonstrated, Raha said, and BARC recently commissioned a low-temperature desalination plant to produce 50 tons per day of freshwater.

The British press, especially the BBC, is full of Global Warming nonsense at the moment, due to the release of the IPCC report (pdf warning).

According to the propaganda, humanity doesn’t have the technology to deal with this problem today. Oops. I’m told, therefore, that I’m going to have to find a way to reduce my household energy use by up to 40%. My small business is going to be subject to new “standards” and “certifications.” I’m going to be subject to new taxes. All this, on top of the other restrictions on my behaviour imposed by the other great dictatorial initiative, the “war on terror.”

This lack of available technology is the biggest lie of them all. We DO have the technology to deal with CO2 emissions, TODAY!

The answer is … wait for it … nuclear. Yes, that demon of the 20th century has the capability to rid us of our CO2 emissions within a matter of a few years. And yet, I can hear the same environmental lobby that is pushing the CO2 lie so hard screaming at me that nuclear power is unsafe, it produces horrible waste products which cannot be dealt with. Another lie.

Some Facts About Nuclear

• It would take 2 million grams of oil, or 3 million grams of coal, to equal the power contained in 1 gram of uranium fuel.
• Unlike oil and coal, nuclear fuel is recyclable.
• Modern reactor designs are safe - Chernobyl would not be possible, no matter how badly managed the facility.
• In a breeder reactor, more fuel can be produced than is used up.
• Unlike any other form of energy production, the cost of waste disposal and recycling is built into the cost of the energy.

The environmentalist fear of nuclear energy is irrational, just as is their fear of climate change. The best way to overcome this type of irrational fear is through knowledge. So, read on, overcome your fears if you have them, and maybe you’ll come to question the motives of the priests of the global warming religion.

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle

At the beginning of the nuclear age, it was assumed that nations would complete the fuel cycle, including the processing of spent fuel, so as to get as near to 100% use of the uranium fuel as possible. There are seven main steps in this cycle:

First, naturally occurring Uranium is mined. Although we have enough sources of Uranium for today’s immediate needs, we would soon have to accelerate the development of fast breeder reactors if we were to use nuclear power as the central thrust of our climate change strategy. Fast breeder reactors produce more fuel than they consume in operation.

Next the uranium is processed and milled into uranium oxide, U3O8, called yellowcake, which is the raw material for fission fuel.

The concentrated uranium is then converted to uranium hexaflouride, UF6, which is heated into a gas to make it suitable for enrichment.

Natural uranium has one primary isotope, U-238, which is not fissionable, and a much smaller amount of U-235, which is. As a result, the uranium fuel must go through a process of enrichment, to increase the ration of fissionable U-235 to the non-fissionable U-238.

Once the enriched uranium is separated from the depleted uranium, it is converted from UF6 into uranium dioxide and fabricated into uniform pellets. The pellets are loaded into long tubes made from zirconium alloy, which captures very few neutrons. The fuel is then transported to the reactor site.

Fuel rods are used for about four and a half years before replacement. When removed from the reactor, the spent fuel is put into cooling pools, which shield it as short lived nuclides decay. Within a year, the radioactivity is only about 12% of what it was when the fuel rod came out of the reactor. This spent fuel contains between 90 and 96 percent usable uranium. It also contains about 1% plutonium, a fuel suitable for breeder reactors.

The spent fuel rods are sent for reprocessing, a process which removes the highly radioactive fission products (3%), and separate out the fissionable U-235 (96%) and the plutonium (1%). Aside from being used in breeder reactors, the plutonium can be used to make mixed 0xide fuel (MOX), which some of the world’s reactors are being converted to use as fuel.

Dealing With Waste

Reprocessing vastly reduces the quantity of waste from nuclear fission. Only 3% of the material sent for reprocessing is unusable High Level Waste. That’s approximately 750kgs from a 1000MW reactor. Read that again - 750 kilogrammes.

This 750 kgs of material is normally incorporated into solid blocks of borosilicate glass, in a process known as vitrification.

Vitrification produces a stable solid that has the high-level waste incorporated its structure. That 750kgs of waste from a 1000MW reactor is contained in 5 tonnes of such glass, which can be readily transported and stored, with appropriate shielding.

There is a cooling period of about 50 years between removal from the reactor and disposal, with the conditioned HLW being retained in interim storage. The level of radioactivity and heat fall rapidly in the first few years and is down to about one thousandth of the level at discharge by 40 years. Many countries are developing plans for disposal of HLW in geological repositories buried in stable rock formations hundreds of metres beneath the surface, although there is currently no pressing technical need to establish such facilities, as the total volume of such wastes is relatively small.

So if we reprocess, how much waste is produced each year? The UK generating capacity is presently about 70GW. In one year, therefore, we would produce 53 tonnes of high level waste if we were completely nuclear. At any one time, based on a 50 year cycle before this waste can be vitrified, we would be storing close to 3000 tonnes of HLW, equivalent to approx 450,000 litres. To put that in perspective, it compares to 5.5 billion litres of oil based fuels stored in the UK at any one time. I think even the UK has enough space that waste could be stored without being in someone’s back yard.

Useful By-products Of Nuclear Energy Generation

• Fresh water
• Hydrogen (pdf warning)
  
• Oxygen
• Precious metals such as palladium, rhodium, and ruthenium (pdf warning)
• Radioisotopes for medicine

A World Based Around Nuclear Energy

The propaganda pushed upon me recently by the BBC and others, promotes a world where I must save energy, reduce my “carbon footprint.” This is a world which will devolve scientifically and technologically. It’s a world of slavery, where everything I do is taxed to “offset” my use of energy. It is a world where 3rd world countries are not permitted to develop, and where people continue to starve due to biofoolery. It is a world where the rich get richer by blowing bubbles.

I would much rather see a world of technological progress, where third world countries are encouraged to develop into modern nation states. Where fighting wars for raw materials are a thing of the past. Where huge areas of desert are irrigated and turned into workable land. Where I can travel to London in 15 minutes, with trains running every 5. Where I can breathe the air without choking, where the birds don’t have to shout because of the traffic noise. Where goods are transported out of sight, so we don’t have road congestion.

So whether or not you are a fully signed up member of the Church of Climate Change, I urge you to consider the motivations of those who say that nuclear power does not provide us with the one and only presently existing solution to our carbon dioxide “problem.” Because its unlikely that they believe their own hype.

During a visit to Brazil in the last week of October, European Commissioner for Science and Research, Janez Potocnik, suggested that Brazil join the seven-member International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, program. ITER, originally proposed by Russian Academician E.P. Velikhov in 1985, will be a tokamak fusion reactor, designed to produce net energy, as a critical demonstration for a commercial fusion reactor.

“Nuclear fusion is certainly one area where Brazil and the ITER members can cooperate more intensively,” a spokesman for the Commissioner said on Oct. 29 from Brussels. Initially, this might take the form of a bilateral agreement with the EU, but Brazil could later join as a full member.

ITER started out as a joint project of the United States, Soviet Union, Europe, and Japan. Currently, South Korea, India, and China are also members. Each participant pays 10% of the cost. The experimental reactor is being built in Cadarache, France.