PHYS 273 Energy and Environment ©

Lesson 8 Transcript: Nuclear Future

Here, we’re going to look at some of the factors that will affect the future of nuclear
energy. Considering renewability and perhaps longevity, so at the current rate of use,
the known uranium deposits would last for around 100 years or so, but with substantial
growth in nuclear programs, this would be less if the uranium were being used in the
same way it were now, there are some new technologies, such as breeder reactors that
could increase this by orders of magnitude. So, at the current rate around 100 years, if
everything stays the same, except we use more nuclear power, then it would decrease
and with other technologies, it could increase substantially. For any nuclear program to
be feasible, the issue of safe long-term storage for the waste products needs to be
addressed. So currently, about 15,000 tonnes of spent fuel is produced worldwide and
this fuel is, of course, radioactive, it’s also hazardous to living organisms, it can be a
heat source, and it lasts for a long time so it stays this way for 1000s of years. Currently,
the international consensus is to have some sort of long-term, secure underground
storage, and secure means in terms of people can’t get out as well as the radiation can’t
escape, as well. Currently, no country has this in place, most spent fuel is kept in water
storage ponds. This was meant as an intermediate storage solution, so right after the
spent fuel was taken out of the reactor, it’s put in these storage ponds while it’s still
radioactively quite hot and then once it is less radioactive, then the idea is to move it to
long-term storage. However, unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet, anywhere. There
was a plan in Yucca Mountain Nevada, to have the first of these long-term storage sites.
So there was a scientific assessment done and they assessed that they could assure
that this would be safe for up to 10,000 years, and so this is when it was approved.
Then later, for political reasons, I believe this was changed they demanded it to be
proven to be safe for up to a million years. Unfortunately, this is too much of a stretch of
the capabilities of scientific assessment. For this reason, the Yucca Mountain project is
now on hold and as to now, there aren’t any long-term underground storage options for
nuclear waste, which is something that will need to be addressed in the future. When
considering the future of nuclear power, we need to consider the idea of weapons and
weaponization. So this isn’t just specifically a country’s military making a high tech
nuclear weapon, but any sort of weaponization of nuclear material. So, the concerns are
the weaponizing of radioactive material in general, also tampering with or theft of
radioactive waste, which is stored somewhere, also the idea of terrorism. So this would
be terrorism using these things above, or terrorism at nuclear facilities. So these are all
concerns that need to be thought of, also the proliferation of weapon technology and so
improving your technology for use of nuclear material is great when you’re thinking of
making energy for a useful reason, however, that technology and that knowledge can

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be used in other ways as well. The methods for security, policymaking, and safely
storing nuclear materials and technologies is not something we’re going to get into in
this course, but because mostly just we don’t have time for it, or it falls into something
more of a political discussion. But this is certainly a major issue that needs to be
considered when thinking of nuclear power generation moving on into the future. People
are hopeful about the idea of nuclear fusion as a future source of nuclear energy.
Currently, though, nuclear fusion is not being used to produce energy for use in society.
So here, I’m showing three reactions, all of which have some sort of hydrogen, so either
deuterium or tritium, different types of hydrogen, so two hydrogen nuclei fusing together
to form a helium nucleus and some energy so that energy could be useful energy like it
is in nuclear fission. I don’t want you to worry about these reactions and the details of
them, the point is just that we have two hydrogen nuclei, we’re bringing them together to
fuse, form a hydrogen nucleus, sorry, a helium nucleus and energy is released. The
hope is that we can you use that energy for, for example, for the generation of electricity
like we do in a fission reaction. So, as I mentioned, energy is released in these fusion
reactions, the issue is that hydrogen isotopes are positively charged, and so they repel
each other, and so in order to get them to fuse into helium nuclei, we need to bring them
together, but they repel each other, because they’re both positively charged. We need
to put in energy in order to bring these together and currently, although there’s energy
released in this fusion reaction, we need to put in more energy to bring your hydrogen
nuclei together, then you get out. So you’re putting in more energy than you get out, this
isn’t an energy source but this could be overcome with new technologies that people
are working on. The advantages of this is there’s less radiation in operation, and there’s
far less waste compared with fission reactors. Also, there’s just an amazing amount of
fuel, so 30 milliliters of fusion fuel would be about 270,000 litres of gasoline. So the idea
of running out of fuel wouldn’t be an issue. Although, as I mentioned, this technology
currently isn’t at a state where it can produce useful energy, I think it’s important to note
that it was only 10 years between when the physics of fission was figured out and
fission was possible and then when there were actual fission reactors producing useful
energy. So, once some of these obstacles are overcome, then things can progress very
quickly. People are hopeful about fusion as a source of nuclear energy in the future,
which would have many advantages over nuclear fission. So technology, which is
already understood, but not widely used is the idea of breeder reactors, which could be
useful moving into the future of nuclear energy. So a breeder reactor is a reactor that
produces fissionable fuel, so it makes fuel in a nuclear process. So, the idea is it starts
with uranium 238, which is not the uranium 235 that is used as a fuel in a fission
reactor, it’s non-fissiable, it can’t be used as fuel, but it’s converted through a nuclear
reaction into plutonium 239 which can be a fuel. So, you start with not a fuel,
uranium 238, and it’s converted into a fuel, plutonium 239, which can be used as a fuel.
So, then, after that reaction, the subsequent reactions produce neutrons, which can

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create more plutonium 239. So, what we get is a chain reaction, which is producing
more and more plutonium 239 which can be used as a fuel from uranium 238, which is
abundant, but can’t be used as a fuel. Then that uranium 238, sorry, the plutonium 239
is then reprocessed, concentrated, and used as a fuel. So, because it uses
uranium 238, these reactors can use can produce much more energy, because when
uranium was mined, it’s mostly uranium 238, so about 99% of uranium is uranium 238.
So that means if we can take that uranium 238 and convert that into a fuel,
plutonium 239, then we can have much more fuel than if we just take the uranium 235
from the uranium and use that. So what that means is that we could have an energy
supply for centuries because we all of a sudden have 100 times more uranium for use
than if we’re just using uranium 235.

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