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whomupclicklike posted:I'm willing to like, have my mind changed here but I don't understand why nuclear energy is worth the risk of a disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima? I recognize that these sort of events are incredibly uncommon and even that Fukushima probably wouldn't have happened had it not been for that tsunami. Chernobyl was a fundamentally bad design that was made on the cheap in the first place and then not maintained whatsoever. They used graphite rods to control the reactor, so when things got too hot, the graphite burned and an explosion happened (note, not a nuclear explosion, just a regular chemical one) and that released a bunch of radioactive junk into the air. It's hard to do good estimates, but maybe 50 immediate deaths and 4000 overall deaths came from it over a decade or so. For context, Coal mining kills 5000+ directly a year, and heaps (greater than 4x) more if you include blacklung and other stuff related to it. Fukushima was a major fuckup, but nobody died from the radiation. It's still a major fuckup, but things like fly ash (coal residue) spills are worse and kill more people. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities Is probably a good way to compare things. it's a "number of dead people per equivalent unit of electricity generated". Historically, nuclear is at the bottom.
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Apr 28, 2017 03:25
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 06:40 |
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Waste is more fuel waiting to be recycled. The U.S. has a (really goddamn tiny) re processor in South Carolina that we don't use intelligently, but there is no physical reason we can't have a literal Department of Energy "Send your reactor waste here and we'll send you back some fuel". There'd be some mildly radioactive cladding that we'd have to deal with, but I think blending it with regular aluminum would dilute it to safe levels until it finished decaying. We still haven't figured out a good way to decommission the reactors them other than "Fill that bitch in concrete". There are several old rear end reactors from the 1950s where I work that are literally mountains of concrete. Luckily concrete is pretty easy, but there are some (underfunded) DOE projects looking at doing something less dramatic than. I did a minor bit on epoxies for fixing contaminated areas in decommissioning reactors. As for waste weapons grade radioactive stuff, we either blend some of it in with the nuclear fuel or we encase it in high temperature, fission decay, and acid resistant ceramics or glass mixes. I am literally working on a journal article on this subject, we should be able to fill the ceramic with 10% wt weapons Pu and then put it in a drum and forget about it, it's a neat project, though not super sexy science. I work for the DOE. I'm not an authority by any means, but I know some of what is going on in one of the national labs.
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Apr 28, 2017 03:43
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whomupclicklike posted:But what happens after those reactions? Is there still waste? Thanks for actually explaining this I really appreciate it Always some unusable radioactive stuff, but if you do it right and chain the nuclear reactions to favor generating certain kinds of radioactive waste, the waste eventually turns inert and no longer radioactive after a few years or decades. It's an oversimplification, but think of every ounce of Uranium is very, very slowly turning into not-radioactive lead all by itself. The Dipshit has issued a correction as of 03:50 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 03:47
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whomupclicklike posted:And then you can use that lead for nuclear shielding, right? The whole problem solves itself? Well, in the case of uranium, you'd have to wait a few billion years, and it's really kinda hard to separate out the lead from the uranium that hasn't turned into lead yet. Some atoms decay faster than others and we can talk about reliably predicting them in terms of large numbers. It's not so bad, since a 2.2 lbs of uranium is something like 500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms.
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Apr 28, 2017 04:00
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Lindsey O. Graham posted:...and no It wouldn't hurt if you started stumping for SRS a bit more. Maybe jail (lynch? Like, SC does have a tradition of that, might as well do it to some people who deserve it) some of the assholes who stole the MoX money and get things back on track. At least get SRNL a line item in the drat budget. The Dipshit has issued a correction as of 14:03 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 14:00
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brugroffil posted:There are some shut down commercial reactors that have gone back to green fields now. I've been to a few of them. You've got the relatively small storage area where they're storing the spent fuel and greater-than-class-C waste, but 90% of the old plant site is just an open field now. Oh cool! Good to know. The only reactors I'm familiar with were ones in the U.S. from just after WW2 that were made to make nuclear bombs. I wish I knew more to know the difference on how they operated to comment/know more.
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Apr 28, 2017 16:37
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I was under the impression that wind farms also functioned as pasture as well. It's not like cows give a poo poo. This isn't the case?
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Apr 28, 2017 18:37
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 06:40 |
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BarronsArtGallery posted:in China Good luck to them, it needs a fair shake and a full test.
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Aug 4, 2017 04:10
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