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The output of a nuclear reactor isn’t waste, it is fuel for a different kind of reactor. If we built those reactors (called a breeder reactor) then we could saf

The output of a nuclear reactor isn’t waste, it is fuel for a different kind of reactor. If we built those reactors (called a breeder reactor) then we could safely and economically use that fuel, recycling so much that the actual waste would go from tons of material filling Olympic class swimming pools, to a few barrels. Nuclear power, done properly, is the cleanest source of energy we have. Why don’t we? Politics and the lack of military uses.

toyg 8y ago
> the lack of military uses As opposed to all those military uses of dams and wind turbines. Right. And of course, I wonder what the fuss is all about with Iran, then... The reason nuclear is in decline is the track record of spectacular disasters: Three Mile, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. Get at least a generation without massive failures, and people might be willing to give nuclear a chance; but there have been 3 in my lifetime alone! (Plus, in any country not as big and isolated as the US, any plant is a massive weakness from a defense perspective...)
- village-idiot 8y ago
  I mean, if you want to talk about safety records of power production, I'd like to point out that fossil fuels kill about 3 million a year, and biofuel (wood, dung) kills about 4.3 million a year. Those estimates are from 2012. Nuclear is nowhere close to that over the past half century of use, even if you toss in fatalities caused by nuclear weapons, which is a whole different category. Realistically, installation of solar and wind is actually more dangerous than Nuclear, because of falls.
- garmaine 8y ago
  What I mean is that the fuel reprocessing designs aren’t miniaturizable, so government money wasn’t spent developing them because they couldn’t be used in aircraft carriers or submarines. When civilian power plants were made, it was basically just scaled up military designs. The same contractors built both. Also the fact that we use uranium instead of the safer and more abundant thorium is because you can’t make thorium bombs. The reactors that have failed are these military derivative designs that lack safety features because there is no space for them in a submarine. No modern design has had such a failure, or could have such a failure since they have no reliance on active cooling and have safeguards to structurally prevent a core meltdown.

toyg 8y ago

> the lack of military uses As opposed to all those military uses of dams and wind turbines. Right. And of course, I wonder what the fuss is all about with Iran, then... The reason nuclear is in decline is the track record of spectacular disasters: Three Mile, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. Get at least a generation without massive failures, and people might be willing to give nuclear a chance; but there have been 3 in my lifetime alone! (Plus, in any country not as big and isolated as the US, any plant is a massive weakness from a defense perspective...)

village-idiot 8y ago
I mean, if you want to talk about safety records of power production, I'd like to point out that fossil fuels kill about 3 million a year, and biofuel (wood, dung) kills about 4.3 million a year. Those estimates are from 2012. Nuclear is nowhere close to that over the past half century of use, even if you toss in fatalities caused by nuclear weapons, which is a whole different category. Realistically, installation of solar and wind is actually more dangerous than Nuclear, because of falls.
garmaine 8y ago
What I mean is that the fuel reprocessing designs aren’t miniaturizable, so government money wasn’t spent developing them because they couldn’t be used in aircraft carriers or submarines. When civilian power plants were made, it was basically just scaled up military designs. The same contractors built both. Also the fact that we use uranium instead of the safer and more abundant thorium is because you can’t make thorium bombs. The reactors that have failed are these military derivative designs that lack safety features because there is no space for them in a submarine. No modern design has had such a failure, or could have such a failure since they have no reliance on active cooling and have safeguards to structurally prevent a core meltdown.