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>Please don't use 'common sense' and talk about how they design bombs and core reactors when you have no physics education. If I can step back from mrschwabe's

>Please don't use 'common sense' and talk about how they design bombs and core reactors when you have no physics education. If I can step back from mrschwabe's immediate questions, I'd like to point out how problematic your attitude is, NamTaf. Nuclear power generation in the West is a political question. Which means its future is going to be decided by the average voter. The average voter is not going to have a "physics education". Maybe they took high-school physics[1], and maybe that class touched on radiation and nuclear power generation. But odds are, even in that case, the average voter doesn't really remember it. I just checked my alma mater's undergraduate physics course catalog, and nuclear physics is an upper-division topic. It is unacceptable, in a democratic society, to suggest that voters have the right to an opinion on a topic of importance to society only if they've taken upper-division university classes on the topic in question. The real failure isn't that mrschwabe doesn't have a physics education. The failure is that, 66 years after nuclear criticality was first used to power a light bulb, the physics/nuclear power advocate community hasn't figured out how to incorporate the basics of nuclear power generation into the average person's "common sense". [1]Obligatory disclaimer about this being a U.S.-centric post. I'll let others comment on the quality of secondary-level physics instruction in other countries.

NamTaf 12y ago
I'm not so convinced it's a purely political issue. I think there's equal parts of bureaucracy and technology in there too. Bureaucracy via the costs associated to run and maintain a plant, given the incredible red tape put in place, and technology in that to myk nowledge even the newest gen4 designs don't neatly and completely resolve the objections people have to them. Are they good enough? Sure. They're good enoguh to convince anyone with an open mind. But they're not the problem. None of them are yet to the point to convince the person who is inherently against nuclear power. It's not yet at the stage where we can throw in some stuff, have it do its nuclear thing and produce energy, then do something very simple, easy, an un-fuck-upable such that there is no problematic waste at the end. Maybe the technological aspect is political in disguise. I mean, it's easier to point at containers of nuclear waste than it is the airbourne pollutants that coal spews out. But I think you'll find that the easier solution to that problem comes from an improved technology that renders it null and void, rather than a change of political will. Particularly when semi-alternatives in the form of the various renewables exist and provide a much bigger attraction to the nuclear detractors even despite their flaws.

NamTaf 12y ago

I'm not so convinced it's a purely political issue. I think there's equal parts of bureaucracy and technology in there too. Bureaucracy via the costs associated to run and maintain a plant, given the incredible red tape put in place, and technology in that to myk nowledge even the newest gen4 designs don't neatly and completely resolve the objections people have to them. Are they good enough? Sure. They're good enoguh to convince anyone with an open mind. But they're not the problem. None of them are yet to the point to convince the person who is inherently against nuclear power. It's not yet at the stage where we can throw in some stuff, have it do its nuclear thing and produce energy, then do something very simple, easy, an un-fuck-upable such that there is no problematic waste at the end. Maybe the technological aspect is political in disguise. I mean, it's easier to point at containers of nuclear waste than it is the airbourne pollutants that coal spews out. But I think you'll find that the easier solution to that problem comes from an improved technology that renders it null and void, rather than a change of political will. Particularly when semi-alternatives in the form of the various renewables exist and provide a much bigger attraction to the nuclear detractors even despite their flaws.