3 ms·
What if we agreed that Nuclear energy could be considered green only if it isn't a design that provides dual use enriching fuel for nuclear weapons? Creating nu
by more_corn 5y ago
What if we agreed that Nuclear energy could be considered green only if it isn't a design that provides dual use enriching fuel for nuclear weapons? Creating nuclear weapons seems incompatible with preserving the environment.
It seems that the nuclear reactor choices have historically been geared towards the dual purposes of
1) Producing power AND
2) Enriching fuel for the most environmentally destructive weapons ever invented. If we were to decouple those two things we'd probably unlock some interesting designs that have fewer problems with long-lived waste and provide a part of our green energy future.
- rtkwe 5y agoI think we should also include long term disposal and reprocessing requirements in there too.
- sigg3 5y agoThis sounds clever. Can anyone knowledgeable chime in, please? I'd love to see more nuclear power.
- p_l 5y agoThe problem is that reactors that can do enriching are also the ones you want to ensure fuel safety - as they can run on natural (not enriched) uranium. If you need enriched uranium to start, then you need enrichment plants, which have 0 difference between making fuel or bomb core (about only real difference being that U-235 as bomb core is somewhat low efficiency option compared to plutonium or thorium fuel cycles). Meanwhile plutonium produced from reactors can be milled together with uranium to produce MOX fuels to be burnt again, often in reactor not capable of breeding fuel. P.S. Thorium doesn't fix any of that, it just was IIRC a bit more complex to use for power generation and for bomb making plutonium won by slight difference.