Julia Riede

Can nuclear warheads be used as energy sources instead of exhausting resources? And if, how does this even work?

Concerns during the cold war era mainly focused on the diversion of Uranium intended for commercial nuclear power towards usage in weapons. During the 1990s, these concerns gave way to a focus on the role of military Uranium as a major source of fuel for commercial nuclear power. Can nuclear warheads be used as energy sources instead of exhausting resources? And if, how does this even work? In the late 1980s the United States and countries of the former Soviet Union signed a series of disarmament treaties to reduce the world's nuclear arsenals. Since then, lots of nuclear materials have been converted into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. Highly-enriched uranium in US and Russian weapons and other military stockpiles amounts to about 1500 tonnes, equivalent to about seven times the annual world Uranium mine production. These existing resources can be used instead of exploiting natural Uranium reserves, which are as limited as all other non-renewable energy sources. Uranium mining is a dirty, polluting, hazardous business which possibly could be stopped altogether if existing resources would be used instead. This talk is a primer in nuclear physics with focus on conversion of weapon grade Uranium and Plutonium into fuel for civil nuclear power plants.

Climate change and the discussion about reducing CO2 emissions to ensure matching the Paris agreement currently is the most important topic in our political and economic discussions. We all agree reducing emissions is a necessity, but how can we possibly achieve this in a world that consumes more energy than ever before? And which price are we willing to pay for it?

Climate change and the discussion about reducing CO2 emissions to ensure matching the Paris agreement currently is the most important topic in our political and economic discussions. We all agree reducing emissions is a necessity, but how can we possibly achieve this in a world that consumes more energy than ever before? And which price are we willing to pay for it? [The Paris agreement](https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiations/paris_en) sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. This can only be achieved by reducing emissions - this primarily means CO2 emission. So far, so good. But let's face the truth: We NEED energy. Our whole world is addicted to it, and cutting the power lines is no option for today's society, economy, and our daily lives. We need energy, therefor we need power plants. Power plants need energy sources for transforming them into electrical energy. These plants can be fuelled by various sources: Coal, wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, biomass, and oil, just to name the major ones. Let's assume for a moment we could build a completely new power infrastructure for a country from scratch under the following prerequisites: * Minimal CO2 emissions * As little impact as possible (environment, health, economics etc.) * Affordable price * Available sources * Lowest possible fuckup factor This task can be approached by translating it into an optimization problem: Finding the ideal energy mix taking into account the conditions listed above. This talk presents an analysis of this optimization problem by comparison of the relevant factors (emissions, affordability, impact, sources) of different energy sources (coal, natural gas, wind, solar, biomass, nuclear and oil). Our aim is to categorize different energy sources under a strict scientific regime without emotional debates, putting price tags on each of them not only made of money but also factors like emissions, fuckup factors, health concerns, and the cost of human lives per TWh.