3 ms·

I don't think so. The problem with the watermelons (green outside, red inside), is that they're a runaway psyops from the cold war time KGB. It's basically a

I don't think so. The problem with the watermelons (green outside, red inside), is that they're a runaway psyops from the cold war time KGB. It's basically a headless chicken that keeps running in the courtyard. More interesting would be the reason why nuclear power has not been more developed BEFORE renewables could be considered. And the reason is: 1- civil nuclear power has been developed using uranium instead of thorium since this produces plutonium as by-product, which is useful to build nuclear weapon. 2- we want to prevent nuclear weapon proliferation, therefore we have to prevent proliferation of uranium-based civil nuclear power. The solution is to start to develop thorium-based civil nuclear power. This doesn't lead to military-use or ecologically problematic by-products, so it can be used everywhere on the planet.

erentz 8y ago
> 1- civil nuclear power has been developed using uranium instead of thorium since this produces plutonium as by-product, which is useful to build nuclear weapon. All of the plutonium production for weapons was done in special purpose reactors at Hanford, WA. It takes a pretty specialized process to extract the plutonium from the fuel slugs. And btw most used nuclear fuel in the US is still sitting in tanks next to the power plants that they were used in. We also stopped producing plutonium a fairly long time ago because we have more than enough for all the weapons we could ever conceivably want to produce. The reason we have the reactors we do is probably more to do with the US navy than anything.
- mikevp 8y ago
  The reason you don't try to make bombs from power reactor plutonium: The long fuel cycle of power reactors produces too much Pu240 and Pu242. It's dang near impossible to get a nuclear explosion if there's much of those isotopes; their high spontaneous fission rate makes the bomb "fizzle" before the core can be sufficiently compressed. Those who pretend to believe that industrial civilization can be run on "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy are engaged in arithmetic denialism.

erentz 8y ago

> 1- civil nuclear power has been developed using uranium instead of thorium since this produces plutonium as by-product, which is useful to build nuclear weapon. All of the plutonium production for weapons was done in special purpose reactors at Hanford, WA. It takes a pretty specialized process to extract the plutonium from the fuel slugs. And btw most used nuclear fuel in the US is still sitting in tanks next to the power plants that they were used in. We also stopped producing plutonium a fairly long time ago because we have more than enough for all the weapons we could ever conceivably want to produce. The reason we have the reactors we do is probably more to do with the US navy than anything.

mikevp 8y ago
The reason you don't try to make bombs from power reactor plutonium: The long fuel cycle of power reactors produces too much Pu240 and Pu242. It's dang near impossible to get a nuclear explosion if there's much of those isotopes; their high spontaneous fission rate makes the bomb "fizzle" before the core can be sufficiently compressed. Those who pretend to believe that industrial civilization can be run on "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy are engaged in arithmetic denialism.