Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III) Barry Brook

Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III) Posted on 24 February 2011 by Barry Brook This is a modified version of the full conference paper. This is the most up-to-date executive summary available, written for a general — albeit technically conversant – audience, of the Integral Fast Reactor: 91st American Meteorology Society Annual Meeting, Jan 23-27, 2011, Seattle, WA  Second Conference on Weather, Climate, and the New Energy Economy Advanced Nuclear Power Systems to Mitigate Climate Change Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook1,7 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7University of Adelaide Abstract Fossil fuels currently supply about 80% of humankind’s primary energy. Given the  imperatives of climate change, pollution, energy security and dwindling supplies, and enormous technical, logistical and economic challenges of scaling up coal or gas power plants with carbon capture and storage to sequester all that carbon, we are faced with the necessity of a nearly complete transformation of the world’s energy systems. Objective analyses of the inherent constraints on wind, solar, and other less-mature renewable energy technologies inevitably demonstrate that they will fall far short of meeting today’s energy demands, let alone the certain increased demands of the future. Nuclear power, however, is capable of providing all the carbon-free energy that mankind requires, although the prospect of such a massive deployment raises questions of uranium shortages, increased energy and environmental impacts from mining and fuel enrichment, and so on. These potential roadblocks can all be dispensed with, however, through the use of fast neutron reactors and fuel recycling. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), developed at U.S. national laboratories in the latter years of the last century, can economically and cleanly supply all the energy the world needs without any further mining or enrichment of uranium. Instead of utilizing a mere 0.6% of the potential energy in uranium, IFRs capture all of it. Capable of utilizing troublesome waste products already at hand, IFRs can solve the thorny spent fuel problem while powering the planet with carbon-free energy for nearly a millennium before any more uranium mining would even have to be considered. Designed from the outset for unparalleled safety and proliferation resistance, with all  major features proven out at the engineering scale, this technology is unrivaled in its ability to solve the most difficult energy problems facing humanity in the 21st century.