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Bump to Robotbeat. Fission reactor designs, with many clever advances in safety, have never been tested because of the lack of support from U.S. DoE. Pilot-scal
by marcgcombi 9y ago
Bump to Robotbeat. Fission reactor designs, with many clever advances in safety, have never been tested because of the lack of support from U.S. DoE. Pilot-scale reactors are expensive, but would really help to advance our working knowledge of these new technologies. Overall, nuclear fission has gotten a bad wrap.
As for the cost of storage, that was worked out 20-30 years ago via the Yuca Mountain facility. If one of the local managers hadn't shifted to a "organic-based storage medium', that was not pre-approved for that application, the fire wouldn't have happened and everything would be fine.
- JohnJamesRambo 9y agoBut that is kinda how everything goes with nuclear. You can't plan for the "if everything goes right" scenario. Shit happens. Humans are very prone to errors. But nuclear proponents always want to pretend that isn't the case and explain away very real things that have happened as being anomalous- when in reality, errors and mistakes are the way the universe works.
- novalis78 9y agoThorconpower is a case in point. They tried very hard to get their experimental reactor off the ground in the US but their pilot project seems to have moved to Indonesia instead now. That's a shame - Thorium and molten salt reactor experience and technological mastery would be extremely useful for solar system space colonization efforts past the orbit of Earth (insolation levels fall dramatically and a lot of basic industrial chemical engineering off planet will encounter abundant raw materials but will also need easy access to enormous quantities of energy). Fissiln is so worthwhile pursuing and it's reputation so bad it will probably need an Elon Musk type persona to tackle it.