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Do the math, with advanced nuclear power (stuff we had working in the 60's and 70's, but was crap for bombs and upended the business model of existing nuclear w
by jhartmann 13y ago
Do the math, with advanced nuclear power (stuff we had working in the 60's and 70's, but was crap for bombs and upended the business model of existing nuclear which is roughly equivalent to giving the razor away at cost and making the money on the blades) you can hold all the energy you will ever use in your hand. A metal ball of Thorium is quite safe as well before it is used in a reactor. A molten salt reactor is a chemical plant running at ambient pressure, a much easier thing to deal with then the steam bombs we have currently deployed. They also don't require crazy coolants like liquid sodium (asking for it, a little water and boom) or fast neutrons (eats up anything containing them like swiss cheese.) The biggest problem with the nuclear industry is that they haven't been innovating since the 60's and 70's, not anything else really. Even the crazy steam bombs we have now are many orders of magnitude safer than other energy sources. How many people have died from installing solar panels, because of hydroelectric power, coal pollution, or petrochemical accidents? Let me give you a hint, all of these are WAY more than the number of people who have been affected by Nuclear accidents. Look up deaths per terawatt/hour of all the energy sources and you will see its quite clear that even current nuclear is SO much more safe than anything else, but it has been effectively marketed against by people invested in the status quo.
Diffuse energy is economically unviable, it is only being deployed at great cost and things like solar will never solve baseline load. People also don't think about the pollution caused by manufacturing things like solar panels. There are vast areas in China that are full of industrial waste that will not degrade for a very very long time due to solar panel manufacturing. Way nastier stuff the radioactive elements, because anything that is really dangerous has a short half life (iodine is completely gone in weeks), and will clean up rather quickly or it is usable as a fuel (though we in the United States are daft for not reprocessing our fuel like sane countries like France.) Even existing nuclear is way better than anything else, and advanced nuclear is even better still. Nuclear has a marketing problem, not a technical one.
If your worried about waste, well you have to realize that the really nasty stuff will all decay in 300-400 years, and anything radioactive left over is something I would be happy to have under my bed as I sleep. Anything radioactive at that point is also really fuel, and advanced nuclear reactors (like a molten salt reactor) will happily burn it up. The whole Yucca mountain crap is just caused by the United States having a silly ban on reprocessing. Another thing people don't mention is that the plutonium extracted from a long running reaction like those used for power is completely unsuitable for making bombs, its really just a bugaboo.
- peterpathname 13y agoyes, I'm worried about waste. No, I don't accept assurances that it's all over in a few hundred years. yes I'm worried about weapons - U233 from the thorium cycle has been weaponised before. as with real nuclear reactors, the issue with the thorium fantasies isnt what comes out of the power reactor, but the leap towards weapons (materials, technology and capacity) that development towards these reactors would represent.