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Re: List of energy-supply topics



1) JohnD's message made me aware that one issue raised recently
was omitted. Therefore the following question was added:

Q9) Should claims that "fusion reactors will offer a practical
alternative to fission reactors in not too distant future"
be still taken seriously?

As you recognized, the list items were extracted from
messages about nuclear energy that were posted recently.
I will wait for more items before posting the updated list.
Please keep this important debate going.

2) It is true that items can be categorized in many ways.
The purpose of recent nuclear energy threads, as far as I
can tell, was to share what we (teachers) know about
many aspects of nuclear technology, including fusion.
This prompted me to identify topics which were discussed
or simply mentioned so far. The posted list of items should
help us keep things in perspective. Unless persuaded to do
otherwise I will stick to the A, D and Q classification of
items. It seems to be good enough for the purpose. The
term "nuclear" will be used in the most general sense.
Ludwik Kowalski

"John S. Denker" wrote:

Ludwik Kowalski wrote:

Phys-L list of nuclear energy topics sorted according to
A, D, and Q.
...
A2) Large supplies of fuel are available.
...
D2) Production of Pu which can be used to build weapons.
....

Let me suggest a few ways of improving the organization of
the investigation.

1) First, let's use terminology more specific than "nuclear".
1a) It's pretty clear Ludwik is assuming fission not fusion.
1b) More importantly, when he asserts "large supplies of
fuel" he seems to imply breeder reactors -- an implication
that the industry and the government are certainly not taking
for granted. A proper analysis would consider the breeder
and non-breeder cases separately. Disadvantage D2 would be
much greater in one case, and alleged advantage A2 would be
absent in the other case.

2) Secondly, we need to evaluate the _magnitude_ of each
advantage and disadvantage. Merely counting the number of
Ds and As isn't sufficiently illuminating. The net-present-
value formalism is the standard way of doing this. Reference:
http://www.monmouth.com/~jsd/physics/projectology.htm#sec-npv

If somebody has a better approach, let's hear it.

3) Also, we need to compare the nuclear options with the
various non-nuclear options. As it says at the aforementioned
URL:

] If there are multiple ways of solving the customer's problem,
] evaluate the NPV of each. Do not just evaluate your favorite
] method in isolation. Do not just evaluate your favorite method
] and some straw-man alternative.

] One way of organizing such an analysis is to use a spreadsheet
] with columns for the competing methods and rows for the advantages
] and disadvantages.