Environment & Energy

...of CANDU technology to the future of the world.

We need to do away with uranium enrichment which has given American Presidents excuses to start barely disguised oil wars.

However a constraint on the needed and essential growth of nuclear energy is the need for reasonably concentrated fissionable isotopes.

The world inventory of plutonium, including weapons grade material can be estimated to be only about 3200 tons, at 80 trillion Joules per kg equivalent to about 250 Exajoules of energy if fully fissioned, less than half of annual world energy demand. If run in standard light water reactors, with a breeding ratio of roughly 0.95, it would last for a long time but supply would decrease over time.

In CANDUs the situation is very different if the plutonium is diluted with a mixture of thorium and once through, depleted, or natural uranium. The fuel comes out of the reactor with uranium that after the removal of neutron absorbing fission products, unusable for weapons diversion, enriched with ²³³U and the traditional isotopes, ready for incorporation into light water reactors around the world, which will have higher breeding ratios, still less than 1.0, but higher.

If the United Stated disintegrates, as it seems to be doing, union of the pieces with Ontario would benefit thre former bordering American States, if only because they will have the cleanest electricity in the world outside of France, and almost certainly the most sustainable electricity, exceeding even France. If the United States survives, the ability to buy imported Canadian electricity, as that coal dependent hellhole Germany now does from France, will serve all of humanity well well beyond our borders as well as possibly saving some wilderness from pro mining and land development antinuke assholes.