You misunderstand. The policy makers are choosing to pay this person (who has a background in fossil fuels) to learn how to move beyond oil, gas & coal. And most policy makers aren’t in elected office.
What I understand, is that “move beyond fossil fuels” is code for, “Do anything and everything that won’t decrease energy use, or energy company profits.”
hahaha. but seriously, the waste still has energy left in it. fast neutron reactor designs like some thorium reactors can use it for fuel and the leftovers are only dangerous for 500 years
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Even the “normal” spent fuel is dangerous only for couple centuries. The strontium-90 and caesium-137 that are the bulk of the mid-halflife isotopes will decay enough by then (10 halflives -> 1/1000 of original activity), and then what remains is only the actinides - plutonium, americium (okay, this one is somewhat unpleasant), leftover uranium. These shine for long time but not much. Not exactly healthy in higher doses (in lower doses we can debate about the radiation hormesis effect, greenies hate it), but also not exactly the quick-death they are painted as. You can manipulate plutonium metal with bare hands (though nickel-coating is strongly suggested, the bitch corrodes FAST) without death penalty, and the toxicity is more chemical than radiological, just don’t breathe the dust. There is the “UPPu club” of ex-Manhattan techies with plutonium detectable in urine, and their mortality seems to be less than average (likely due to the additional health care they are getting).
I’m convinced that global warming is a problem that needs attention. That’s why I’m in favor of more nukes, more dams, and more shale gas. If I was opposed to all those things, too, it would be obvious that global warming was not really my primary concern.
OK, I’ll bite. How is burning more shale gas going to help with carbon emissions?
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IFF (if and only if) it is done with full attention to safety requirements (proper concrete sleeve all the way down, safe filtering and disposal of fluids, etc.) and is used instead of coal energy, the net result is in favor of shale gas…at least for the near future until renewables start picking up the majority.
So it’s good for the environment kind of like nuclear power is good for the environment… assuming that it’s done properly, no mistakes or criminal negligence… ever, for hundreds of thousands of years…
With the obsolete reactors we are used to. Molten-salt ones should be much less fussy and less prone to barfing volatiles and flash-boiling steam carrying radioactive aerosols over large area. Subcritical reactors with neutron generators can burn off the actinides down to the level of natural ore or even below, reducing issues with storage of burnt fuel to low few centuries.
I should look up where the atomphobic greenies placed the activity cutoff for significant danger that they got hundreds of millenia.
I’m also intrigued by pebble bed technology, It looks to be more reliable. Don’t get me wrong, without RTGs to power our space probes, few of my favorite things would be possible. My gut response to any new technology is not to ban it outright, just that we need to be mindful of what we know we don’t know.
I’m still concerned that 60 years into the grand experiment of atoms for peace, we still don’t have a civilian waste repository. It’s as if a car designer hadn’t bothered with any sort of exhaust system, so the fumes go directly into the cab. And when questioned, the car maker says that people in the car can just roll down the windows. There’s a pretty serious credibility gap as far as future promise for future reactor designs.
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“Obsolete Reactors” made me realize something. Nuclear tech is sexy, there’s no questioning that. At least as sexy as consumer electronics. But where last weeks’ bleeding edge machine can just go into a landfill, (or get messily recycled by peasants far far away from the showroom floor) each nuclear reactor we open up represents a commitment far, farbeyond the operating lifespan of the machine itself.
If we began planning a generation ship to the nearest star, that mission would be complete before the waste we’re generating now would be rendered safe.
So we are going to be deeply committed to handling obsolete nuclear technology for a very, very long time in the future, whether or not the new tech is any better. If it seems like the anti-nuke lobby is short-sighted, focused on the past, you might not be taking the long view of it.
Depends, the pebbles sometimes tend to break and leak. But generally a worthy alternative for smaller installations, I’d say. And unlike to blow up like the good ol’ SL-1, when they tried small reactors.
I am concerned that the waste repository projects usually make the material inaccessible for further processing.
Depends. I’d see it as an opportunity for subcritical reactors. There’s a lot of energy in that stuff. Let’s get it out. Burn, baby, burn!
There are works on robotic disassembly systems for buildings and reactor systems that already exist. There are also talks, not sure about how far it is technically, about designing simple-ish end-of-service disassembly into future designs.
Unless it gets burned in subcritical reactors.
Also, the danger time is being calculated in weird ways. I actually do not know how the end-of-dangerousness for spent fuel is specified. Where is the cutoff? Activity comparable to natural uranium ore? Overall hazard/toxicity comparable with mercury ores? Or do the greenies intentionally fearmonger and put the threshold somewhere unreasonably low, below even natural substances?
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