4 ms·

Can't believe somewhere in the world, someone is still harnessing nukes

dang 8y ago
Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
icc97 8y ago
John McCarthy has an interesting website over nuclear energy [0]. I can't vouch for how actually true it is, but it seems reasonably well argued. This was his comment over nuclear waste: > Q. What about nuclear waste? > A. The waste consists of the fission products. They are highly radioactive at first, but the most radioactive isotopes decay the fastest. (That's what being most radioactive amounts to). About one cubic meter of waste per year is generated by a power plant. It needs to be kept away from people. After 10 years, the fission products are 1,000 times less radioactive, and after 500 years, the fission products will be less radioactive than the uranium ore they are originally derived from. The cubic meter estimate assumes reprocessing, unfortunately not being done in the U.S. I'd always assumed 25,000 years for it to return to normal levels. [0]: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html
- GW150914 8y ago
  I’m very pro-nuclear, we almost certainly need it while we improve renewables. However, 25,000 years or 500 years... it’s pretty much the same problem for us as a species. 500 years is significantly longer than the US has been a country, and represents a period of time measured in many many generations. 500 years of storage is a hard problem, and from the perspective of us, our kids, their kids, and their kids and a dozen generations after it might as well be a thousand, ten thousand, or 25,000 years. 500 years is longer than any of us will be alive and far longer than we can hope to predict the course of society and technology.
  - icc97 8y ago
    I agree, it's a bit ridiculous talking in these terms. Primarily I just want to have my facts reasonably straight if I'm going to have a debate. Shakespeare was born approximately 500 years ago, Cambridge University was founded 800 years ago where as 25,000 years ago was in the depths of the last ice age (11,000) and Wooly mammoths still existed (4,000). I can visualise the first couple in my head, not the last two. Given the fairly drastic things that are happening to the great barrier reef (50% loss in 2 years and it's about 6-8,000 years old [0]) I question more and more, how much of a risk nuclear is worth taking until solar and wind can take over. > 500 years of storage is a hard problem, and from the perspective of us, our kids, their kids, and their kids and a dozen generations after I agree, we're passing on another problem, but it is a solvable problem. Humans are capable of building structures that stay intact for more than 500 years. With climate change, there's so many factors involved we've no real idea if it is even solvable. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef#Geology_and_geography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef#Geology_and...
    - GW150914 8y ago
      I couldn’t agree more, and moreover the odds of us giving the future something other than our waste probably depends to some extent on embracing nuclear power. If not, what we’re going to pass on might be light on radioactivity, but heavy on a ruined climate and mass extinctions. I grant that in a perfect world we wouldn’t burn coal or use nuclear power, but in this most imperfect world we need to stop using fossil fuels and ramp up nuclear to ease us into renewables over the next century.
  - 08-15 8y ago
    Incorporate the fission products into a glass by boiling with nitric acid and melting with iron oxide and phosphoric acid. Cast the glass into large blocks, dump those into the deep sea. The radiation is shielded, heat is convected away, nothing dissolves, nobody gets hurt, evil terrorists couldn't retrieve the stuff if they tried with both hands. How is this difficult? If we did this with plain spent fuel, the glass would contain plutonium, and the usual professional liars (Nader, Caldicott, ...) would claim that the plutonium and uranium would dissolve over millions of years and give everyone cancer. But with fission products and a time horizon of just 500 years, even that kind of nonsense doesn't have any impact anymore. (And we shouldn't trash plutonium. It's valuable!)

dang 8y ago

Could you please not post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

John McCarthy has an interesting website over nuclear energy [0]. I can't vouch for how actually true it is, but it seems reasonably well argued. This was his comment over nuclear waste: > Q. What about nuclear waste? > A. The waste consists of the fission products. They are highly radioactive at first, but the most radioactive isotopes decay the fastest. (That's what being most radioactive amounts to). About one cubic meter of waste per year is generated by a power plant. It needs to be kept away from people. After 10 years, the fission products are 1,000 times less radioactive, and after 500 years, the fission products will be less radioactive than the uranium ore they are originally derived from. The cubic meter estimate assumes reprocessing, unfortunately not being done in the U.S. I'd always assumed 25,000 years for it to return to normal levels. [0]: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/nuclear-faq.html

GW150914 8y ago
I’m very pro-nuclear, we almost certainly need it while we improve renewables. However, 25,000 years or 500 years... it’s pretty much the same problem for us as a species. 500 years is significantly longer than the US has been a country, and represents a period of time measured in many many generations. 500 years of storage is a hard problem, and from the perspective of us, our kids, their kids, and their kids and a dozen generations after it might as well be a thousand, ten thousand, or 25,000 years. 500 years is longer than any of us will be alive and far longer than we can hope to predict the course of society and technology.
- icc97 8y ago
  I agree, it's a bit ridiculous talking in these terms. Primarily I just want to have my facts reasonably straight if I'm going to have a debate. Shakespeare was born approximately 500 years ago, Cambridge University was founded 800 years ago where as 25,000 years ago was in the depths of the last ice age (11,000) and Wooly mammoths still existed (4,000). I can visualise the first couple in my head, not the last two. Given the fairly drastic things that are happening to the great barrier reef (50% loss in 2 years and it's about 6-8,000 years old [0]) I question more and more, how much of a risk nuclear is worth taking until solar and wind can take over. > 500 years of storage is a hard problem, and from the perspective of us, our kids, their kids, and their kids and a dozen generations after I agree, we're passing on another problem, but it is a solvable problem. Humans are capable of building structures that stay intact for more than 500 years. With climate change, there's so many factors involved we've no real idea if it is even solvable. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef#Geology_and_geography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Barrier_Reef#Geology_and...
  - GW150914 8y ago
    I couldn’t agree more, and moreover the odds of us giving the future something other than our waste probably depends to some extent on embracing nuclear power. If not, what we’re going to pass on might be light on radioactivity, but heavy on a ruined climate and mass extinctions. I grant that in a perfect world we wouldn’t burn coal or use nuclear power, but in this most imperfect world we need to stop using fossil fuels and ramp up nuclear to ease us into renewables over the next century.
- 08-15 8y ago
  Incorporate the fission products into a glass by boiling with nitric acid and melting with iron oxide and phosphoric acid. Cast the glass into large blocks, dump those into the deep sea. The radiation is shielded, heat is convected away, nothing dissolves, nobody gets hurt, evil terrorists couldn't retrieve the stuff if they tried with both hands. How is this difficult? If we did this with plain spent fuel, the glass would contain plutonium, and the usual professional liars (Nader, Caldicott, ...) would claim that the plutonium and uranium would dissolve over millions of years and give everyone cancer. But with fission products and a time horizon of just 500 years, even that kind of nonsense doesn't have any impact anymore. (And we shouldn't trash plutonium. It's valuable!)