3 ms·

Chernobyl with its totally mad graphite design is not representative of safe designs like Fukushima, or French plants, or even Chinese plants...

chasil 2y ago
Are there safer plants still, that focus on eliminating the daughter nuclei? I understood that one benefit of molten salt reactors is that the fission products were easier to process or burn. Edit: "MSRs enable cheaper closed nuclear fuel cycles, because they can operate with slow neutrons. Closed fuel cycles can reduce environmental impacts: chemical separation turns long-lived actinides into reactor fuel. Discharged wastes are mostly fission products with shorter half-lives. This can reduce the needed containment to 300 years versus the tens of thousands of years needed by light-water reactor spent fuel." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
fsh 2y ago
Fukushima also released more radiation than all the coal that has ever been burned (a few hundred PBq, ignoring the thousands of PBq of Xe-133). The amount of radiation created by a nuclear power reactor is on an entirely different scale than any natural source of radiation.
wkat4242 2y ago
Yet we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and many others (military ones too). Unforeseen accidents happen. Wars too, which tend to destroy safety equipment. Artillery was fired around Zaporizhzhia when the reactors were still online, Ukraine is currently invading Russia near Kursk where two of the mad-graphite RBMK reactors are still operational today. I hope they try to avoid those when blowing stuff up. Because they don't have containment vessels. And then see how difficult it is to clean up an accident like Fukushima where the containment mostly held. It feels like playing with fire.
- exe34 2y ago
  > It feels like playing with fire Much safer to burn the rest of the planet instead.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    That's going to happen anyway. We're already locked in. No amount of nuclear we can build can reverse that in time. We're just adding more risks to the mix. And externalising more issues to the future which is how we got into this crisis to begin with.
    - exe34 2y ago
      I love it, we went from "it's impossible" to "it's not happening", to "it's happening but it's too early to waste money on it", to "it's happening but it's too late". > externalising more issues to the future which is how we got into this crisis to begin with. is this the "nuclear would take 20 years" we've been hearing for the last 60? [0] https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak?si=us7OuYwGLSrU-uod https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak?si=us7OuYwGLSrU-uod
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield You’re comparing rubber ducks and battleships
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  Chernobyl was an actual disaster. The others created big headlines, but the real human casualties were smaller than a bad traffic accident. The core argument here is "you never know!". And that argument is always true. But people only apply it to things they're afraid of.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    It's not just about deaths. Hundreds of billions in cleanup is a disaster too. Environmental releases too.

chasil 2y ago

Are there safer plants still, that focus on eliminating the daughter nuclei? I understood that one benefit of molten salt reactors is that the fission products were easier to process or burn. Edit: "MSRs enable cheaper closed nuclear fuel cycles, because they can operate with slow neutrons. Closed fuel cycles can reduce environmental impacts: chemical separation turns long-lived actinides into reactor fuel. Discharged wastes are mostly fission products with shorter half-lives. This can reduce the needed containment to 300 years versus the tens of thousands of years needed by light-water reactor spent fuel." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor

fsh 2y ago

Fukushima also released more radiation than all the coal that has ever been burned (a few hundred PBq, ignoring the thousands of PBq of Xe-133). The amount of radiation created by a nuclear power reactor is on an entirely different scale than any natural source of radiation.

wkat4242 2y ago

Yet we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield and many others (military ones too). Unforeseen accidents happen. Wars too, which tend to destroy safety equipment. Artillery was fired around Zaporizhzhia when the reactors were still online, Ukraine is currently invading Russia near Kursk where two of the mad-graphite RBMK reactors are still operational today. I hope they try to avoid those when blowing stuff up. Because they don't have containment vessels. And then see how difficult it is to clean up an accident like Fukushima where the containment mostly held. It feels like playing with fire.

exe34 2y ago
> It feels like playing with fire Much safer to burn the rest of the planet instead.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  That's going to happen anyway. We're already locked in. No amount of nuclear we can build can reverse that in time. We're just adding more risks to the mix. And externalising more issues to the future which is how we got into this crisis to begin with.
  - exe34 2y ago
    I love it, we went from "it's impossible" to "it's not happening", to "it's happening but it's too early to waste money on it", to "it's happening but it's too late". > externalising more issues to the future which is how we got into this crisis to begin with. is this the "nuclear would take 20 years" we've been hearing for the last 60? [0] https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak?si=us7OuYwGLSrU-uod https://youtu.be/nSXIetP5iak?si=us7OuYwGLSrU-uod
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> we've had Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Sellafield You’re comparing rubber ducks and battleships
BurningFrog 2y ago
Chernobyl was an actual disaster. The others created big headlines, but the real human casualties were smaller than a bad traffic accident. The core argument here is "you never know!". And that argument is always true. But people only apply it to things they're afraid of.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  It's not just about deaths. Hundreds of billions in cleanup is a disaster too. Environmental releases too.