Nucular Powaaaaah (git gud 'murica)

[archibaldcrane]

I don't think there's any GenIV plants operating at utility scale is there?

Regardless, we know what to do with nuclear waste, we've been safely burying it for 60 damn years.

[Salodin]

Not the thread for it, but how much room does burying waste take? And how far are we from making plants that run off the waste of the old plants?

[BerenTebogo]

I don't think there's any GenIV plants operating at utility scale is there?

Regardless, we know what to do with nuclear waste, we've been safely burying it for 60 damn years.

I don't believe so, but the plans are all there and have been there. There aren't any because we've allowed progress to grind to a halt for something that is statistically less dangerous than walking to the corner store.

[BerenTebogo]

Also for specifics we need light the Kyreth (?) signal. He is an actual Nuclear Physicist/Engineer who works in the industry afaik.

[archibaldcrane]

China is going to be the new nuclear plant superpower, they are building literally hundreds of them over the next 20 years.

[zoobernut]

I don't think there's any GenIV plants operating at utility scale is there?

Regardless, we know what to do with nuclear waste, we've been safely burying it for 60 damn years.

I don't know all the details so this information is second hand but my father in law is a nuclear engineer and we had a discussion one time that burying the "waste" was totally unnecessary as the waste from the nuclear power plants could be converted to usable fuel again and used over and over until it decayed down to harmless materials however an archaic law passed for whatever reason makes it illegal to do this process in the U.S. hence the burying of waste.

Maybe I didn't fully understand what he was talking about but he said it would make nuclear power plants even safer.

[archibaldcrane]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_...ste_repository

This was the solution to US nuclear waste but fucktard counter-productive environmentalists fear-mongered it to death.

For the first 10,000 years, the EPA would retain the 2001 final rule’s dose limit of 15 millirem per year. This is protection at the level of the most stringent radiation regulations in the U.S. today. From 10,000 to one million years, EPA established a dose limit of 100 millirem per year. EPA's rule requires the Department of Energy to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change, and container corrosion, over one million years. The current analysis indicates that the repository will cause less than 1 mrem/year public dose through 1,000,000 years.

[zoobernut]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_...ste_repository

This was the solution to US nuclear waste but fucktard counter-productive environmentalists fear-mongered it to death.

I don't want to derail this thread any further maybe we should start a new nuclear power thread? However what is the storage capacity of yucca mountain? What is the rate of production of nuclear waste on a per plant basis? How long will it take before we need to create a new storage location? Those would be more important questions than how many millirem's are released since that is negligible.

[Byrthnoth]

China is going to be the new ...

I'm not so sure I trust China to be the most responsible purveyor of nuclear power.

[archibaldcrane]

I'm not so sure I trust China to be the most responsible purveyor of nuclear power.

Well, the US has long since relinquished their lead in the area, so we don't have much say in the matter. It's happening.

http://www.cdn06.com/china-aims-to-b...030-25107.html

In the next 15 years they are building more nuclear plants than the US currently has in operation.

[Byrthnoth]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclea...and_regulation

With no large disasters under their belt, their record is better than early adopters of nuclear power like the US and Russia. I just hope they manage to maintain it as they dramatically increase their number of plants.

[zoobernut]

I think the Fukeshima issue is going to be the biggest roadblock to expanding nuclear power in the USA right now. There is so much false information and fear mongering surrounding that disaster in addition to the fact that it wasn't handled that well that people are scared of another disaster like that.

[Dotsudoku]

Ye old, I'm scared of <insert inevitable thing here> so lets make sure <insert inevitable thing here> is as difficult as possible to carefully and properly implement

[Zetanio]

I really hate that nuclear energy isn't used for as many applications as it can fulfill. People are stuck in the 1950's as per usual.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Wasn't nuclear popular in the 50s? i was under the impression it was only after 3-mile and chernobyl that the fearmongering really gained any steam.

[Xno Kappa]

Wasn't nuclear popular in the 50s? i was under the impression it was only after 3-mile and chernobyl that the fearmongering really gained any steam.

That was my thought as well.

[BerenTebogo]

Yes

[archibaldcrane]

And 3-mile island didn't even kill anybody lol.

Chernobyl is the only mass-death nuclear accident, and it killed fewer than 50 in the immediate aftermath. (and maybe 4000 premature deaths from a slightly increased risk of cancers in the surrounding area)

Even counting Chernobyl, nuclear worldwide is extremely safe.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_8bMSE0_NW...eathpertwh.png

Or put another way:

http://atomicinsightscom.c.presscdn....-life-lost.png

How do solar or wind kill people you ask?

Literally from workers falling from rooftops or accidents in construction or maintenance. That alone makes them as or more dangerous to human life than nuclear power, per unit of electricity produced.

[Zetanio]

You guys are right. Shoulda said 1970's x_x

[Churchill]

What China has going for it is that they are fully invested in making a Thorium reactor work. If they can do it, they'll own the patents to the engineering that is built around it which means that for anyone else to build a reactor, the parts come from them.

If they could get it to work, it means that the Earth is powered no matter what ridiculous requirements arise until after the Sun dies.