171–180 of 554 posts
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If only a method for permanent disposal of nuclear waste actually existed.
If only a method for permanent disposal of carbon dioxide emissions from gas plants actually existed.
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If only a method for permanent disposal of carbon dioxide emissions from gas plants actually existed.
Sigh... If only a method for converting carbon dioxide emissions into another gas actually existed in nature.
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We could dump it into the ocean and not worry about it. There's so much cooling capacity and radiation shielding in the oceans alone that we'd never run out of space, so all of the current disposal strategies are way above and beyond what's needed. Containment is solved problem. It's important to note that other energy types also produce waste. For example, coal ash is incredibly toxic and hard to dispose of, and we…
Are you trying to piss off Namor?
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We could dump it into the ocean and not worry about it. There's so much cooling capacity and radiation shielding in the oceans alone that we'd never run out of space, so all of the current disposal strategies are way above and beyond what's needed. Containment is solved problem. It's important to note that other energy types also produce waste. For example, coal ash is incredibly toxic and hard to dispose of, and we…
Another option which is completely safe and permanent* is drilling a borehole few km down and dumping the waste there. It's not coming back no matter what. The research done into it shows that "only" 800 boreholes would be required to store literally all nuclear waste ever produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal *to a point where it was actually brought up as a negative, because if we ever want…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re...
They have thought thousands of years ahead and set up many different types of warning signs and symbols in case a future civilization discovers it.
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Climate change his hardly an existential threat for humanity. We survived the last ice age with stone tools, this is a less severe change. Economic impacts from things like rising sea levels really depend on how much we spend on maintaining things as they currently are vs adapting to the new normal. Aka do you live below sea level, raise the city, or move somewhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chica…
The last ice age occurred gradually over the span of millennia. Anthropic climate change is occurring in an instant by comparison. Not to mention, humanity survived by mass migration, something that's a lot harder for integrated global economies to do. Few believe humanity is going to go extinct. But extinction of industrialized civilization is a more real concern. And the collapse of industrialized civilization will…
The global food surplus is projected to continue even in the worst case. Energy and raw material production is similarly not a major concern. People continue to live in Dubai which demonstrate how extreme local conditions can get without forcing exodus. Further, few places are expected to get even that bad.
Yes, changes to weather patterns, sea levels, invasive species, even diseases are likely. But, collapse of civilization is only really a risk if WWIII kicks off.
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In this particular case, a power plant with these nuscale reactors would probably have survived a Fukushima type accident. One effect of being small is that the reactors are designed to be passively cooled after shutdown, using convection instead of pumped flow. So there is no need for emergency diesel generators to keep the coolant pumps running.
Sure, it's safer for reactors to tolerate flooding, if indeed these reactors actually do tolerate flooding. Definitely that would be a better design in flood/tsunami-prone areas. No design (from history, especially no reactor design) is perfect. A set of smaller reactors that were not co-located would be more tolerant of site-specific vulnerabilities in their design.
The reactor modules are partially immersed in a pond, the ultimate heat sink. Cooling is passive, i.e., no cooling pumps, and does not require electrical power.
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Another option which is completely safe and permanent* is drilling a borehole few km down and dumping the waste there. It's not coming back no matter what. The research done into it shows that "only" 800 boreholes would be required to store literally all nuclear waste ever produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_borehole_disposal *to a point where it was actually brought up as a negative, because if we ever want…
There's one in Finland: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_re... They have thought thousands of years ahead and set up many different types of warning signs and symbols in case a future civilization discovers it.
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This undermines some of the claimed benefits. A bunch of little Fukushima Daiichi reactors in the same location wouldn't have fared any better than the actual Fukushima Daiichi reactor.
In this particular case, a power plant with these nuscale reactors would probably have survived a Fukushima type accident. One effect of being small is that the reactors are designed to be passively cooled after shutdown, using convection instead of pumped flow. So there is no need for emergency diesel generators to keep the coolant pumps running.
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And so a pool of water is not enough because it will boil away. A continuous flow must be present that can not be interrupted.
You need a sufficiently large reserve to allow the reactor to cool, not an infinite supply. Reactors can be shut down and in this case the pool is sized to absorb all decay heat from the shutdown, plus a significant safety margin.
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There's ~4 billion tons of uranium dissolved in seawater, too. Which is enough for a millenia or three - if we used it for all of our power needs.
How much energy would it take to extract one ton of uranium from the ocean?
[0] https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnucene.2017.04...