alexanderpf:

US regulators approved plans to build the first new nuclear power plant in more than 30 years, despite objections of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman, who cited safety concerns stemming from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The graphic above shows the locations of the 104 nuclear power plants in the US. It also provides some statistics about nuclear power worldwide. [Graphic: REUTERS]

Read more: U.S. approves first new nuclear plant in a generation

via reuters

Motherboard TV: The Thorium Dream

This is a great documentary on the element radioactive Thorium.  It was set aside in the early nuclear research days in order to produce uranium and plutonium for weapons.  I highly recommend you give it a watch and research this element and the new research on the subject.

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In our case, it was the latter. While the idea of building small, thorium-based nuclear reactors – thought to be dramatically safer, cheaper, cleaner and terror-proof than our current catalog of reactors – can be shooed away as fringe by some, the germ of the idea began in the U.S. government’s major atomic lab, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in the 1960s, only to be left by the wayside as the American nuclear industry plowed ahead with its development of the light water reactors and the uranium fuel cycle. It’s only in the past half-decade that the idea has picked up steam again on the Internet, thanks to enterprising enthusiasts who have chronicled the early experiments, distributed documents, and posted YouTube videos. But if thorium’s second life on the Internet has grown the flock of adherents exponentially, it’s also pulled in more than a few people whose nuclear expertise doesn’t extend far past Wikipedia, adding a sheen of hype to the proceedings.

Still, the idea has legs, if new research programs by India and China are any indication. The former has just announced a prototype thorium-based advanced heavy water reactor, while the latter is researching a liquid fuel reactor based on the 1960s design. In the U.S., the race is being advanced not by the government but by some of the central movers and shakers of the Internet movement.

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Gizmodo

Motherboard

Solar Power Is Cheaper Than Nuclear for the First Time

Here’s bright spot in the news of the day: energy from new solar installations has, for the first time, become cheaper than energy from new nuclear plants, according to a new Duke University study. Thanks to cost-saving technologies and economies of scale, price can no longer be an excuse to invest in nuclear power rather than solar.

Inhabitat

Thorium as the future of nuclear power?

Interesting article over on Wired about Kirk Sorensen and the community served by his Energy From Thoriumblog. To hear these people tell it, thorium fission in fluid fuel reactors offers an idyllic vision of a boundless-energy-from-the-atom type future no one has really believed in since the early 50s. Thorium, reportedly, is abundant, safe, highly efficient as a nuclear fuel, and produces waste that is radioactive only for a few hundred years instead of tens of thousands.

Definitely read the full article on wired about this possible nuclear full that is abundant and cleaner than the ones in use now and also the band of scientists pushing this cleaner fuel named after the norse god of thunder.

Wired

Make:

The Next Nuclear Renaissance is already underway.

Ever since the disaster at Three Mile Island, the US has cooled on nuclear power. With cheap alternatives like coal always on hand, and that dangerous, fallout-prone perception entrenched in the American imagination—and the NIMBY concerns that came with it—nuclear power fell to the wayside. The last approved nuclear plant was built over ten years ago, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hadn’t received an application for a new license in a long, long time. And then. Spurred on by the ever-growing interest in clean energy, nuclear power has come back into view over the last couple years. Scientists are again looking at ways of making nuclear safer and more efficient, power companies are investing in the technology again, and applications are streaming in for new plants.

(via TreeHugger)

New Study Predicts US Energy Future: 45 New Nuclear Reactors, 100 Million Plug in Electrics, and More

To reduce emissions to levels set by the climate bill (which we all know aren’t nearly low enough), the US is going to need at least 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030. It’s also going to need to reduce general power consumption by 8%, according to a study done by the Electric Power Research Institute, whose members are responsible for generating 90% of the nation’s electricity. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the group’s forecast for the energy future of the United States …

According to Bloomberg, the report also calls for “building 100 million plug-in electric vehicles and retrofitting about 18 percent of U.S. coal-power plants to capture emissions.” A pretty tall order, to say the least, considering we barely have a million Priuses on the road—100 million plug in electric in the next 20 years (even the next 40) would be fantastic, but is it feasible?

The report goes on to make other predictions, some that far outpace the more conservative ones made by the US Department of Energy. For instance, the government predicts that we’ll have around 60,000 Megawatts of renewable energy up and running by 2030—the EPRI thinks we’ll have 135,000 MW, around 15% of total US power generation. I hope they’re right.

And then there’s this, via Bloomberg:

“The analysis confirms that while the cost of implementing major CO2 emissions reductions is significant, development and deployment of a full portfolio of technologies will reduce the cost to the U.S. economy by more than $1 trillion,” according to a summary of the report.

Encouraging stuff. And finally, about perhaps the tallest order of them all: 45 new nuclear power reactors over 20 years. This seems extremely ambitious, seeing as how we only have 104 up and running right now, and the last approved reactor was built more than ten years ago. And there’s still the waste problem to think about, too.

Overall, the report seems to give a pretty positive forecast—let’s hope its more optimistic figures are closer to reality than the gov’s.

(via TreeHugger)

I just copied the entire article because it is so awesome that a study is actually optimistic about the near future.