I just wanted to bump this topic as Climatologist (and peak oil advocate) Dr Barry Brooks of Adelaide University, Australia says that just today's nuclear waste could run the world for 500 years.
In summary, he believes:
* IFR’s eat today’s nuclear waste, and are the only way to economically solve the previous generation’s long lived nuclear waste!
* Instead of old waste being an expensive problem to guard for the next 100 thousand years or so, it becomes a fuel that could run the world for the next 500 years! Just the American waste alone would then be worth $30 trillion dollars!
* Nuclear waste from older reactors has to be stored for 100 thousand years, but after ‘burning’ in an IFR it is reduced to 10% of the mass and then only has to be stored for 300 years because it is so radioactive that it quickly burns itself out.
* 500 years of cheap baseload power is attractive in a world of peak oil, gas, and coal, and who knows what other energy alternatives we may have discovered and developed by then?
* If we started building IFR’s today, by the time we ran out of ‘normal waste’ to reprocess, the first few generations of IFR ’super-hot’ waste would have burnt themselves out and could be decommissioned from high security storage and be safe! That’s the nuclear waste problem solved!
* Even at lower concentrations of ore, the particles are so rich in energy that it becomes economical at some point to extract uranium & thorium even from seawater!
http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fas ... ear-power/Concentrated, baseload power as long as we need. As an activist for New Urbanism, I'm also a bit sad that I can see "Better Place" electric cars solving the long-distance drive problem with the 2 minute battery swap. (Filling up at your old fashioned petroleum station takes an average of 7 minutes).
Sha Agassi, the founder of Better Place, gave this presentation at a pivotal Australian conference, and claims he can sell electric km's at a fuel equivalent price of about $0.80 cents a litre. (Which is about 30 or 40 cents cheaper than petrol at the moment in Australia).
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2 ... 656263.htmSure there will be horrible economic consequences for having left peak oil too late to adjust to smoothly, and sure we're probably going to face a Greater Depression as the rationing over the next decades kicks in, but by the time my kids are in their 30's I'm guessing society will be largely petroleum free and running on electricity, and that includes mining, agriculture (with nuclear synthesised fuels or maybe biochar syngas), electric airships (solar PV on the outside and maybe some backup hydrogen fuel on the inside... and yes I know hydrogen costs a lot of energy to make), fast rail, and hopefully... if we have half a brain, lots of New Urbanism.
(See this... my favourite summary of New Urbanism in 3 minutes. I hope Kunstler's seen this!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJt_YXIoJI
Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.
https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/