181–190 of 201 posts
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> UK got rid of coal Not quite https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-56023895
Please: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Electric... I guess while there's a guy in UK doing a barbeque with coal, I can't say "UK got rid of coal" here.
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I don't count tritiated water as waste, and I don't think anyone does. Not sure what your point is.
You're counting everything including LLW and chemical waste on one side of the equation and only SNF on the other. It's so stupid one would think you're actively trying to discredit sane nuclear proponents by associating them with you.
So, in your opinion, if we look at long lived nuclear waste, did the weapons programs produce more such waste than the civilian reactors, or less?
Also, I'm saying it would make sense to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel produced by the civilian reactors at the WIPP repository? Are you saying this does not make sense? Why?
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You're counting everything including LLW and chemical waste on one side of the equation and only SNF on the other. It's so stupid one would think you're actively trying to discredit sane nuclear proponents by associating them with you.
Why don't you enlighten us then? You are saying my comparison is not apples and apples. So, in your opinion, if we look at long lived nuclear waste, did the weapons programs produce more such waste than the civilian reactors, or less? Also, I'm saying it would make sense to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel produced by the civilian reactors at the WIPP repository? Are you saying this does not make sense? Why?
You're also now asserting that weapons waste is handled in a perfectly fine way suitable for orders of magnitude more long lived waste in the same breath you imply they're far more irresponsible.
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> but it may well be worth billions of dollars to prevent the Fukushima disaster. Let's see about "Fukushima disaster". Built in 1982. In 2012 was hit by a 9.0–9.1 undersea megathrust earthquake (preceded by a 7.2 foreshock two days before, three 6 earthquakes on the same day, and hundreds of aftershocks in the next days) and immediately after by a 14-meter-hight tsunami. The earthquake exceeded plant tolerances (gro…
People have preferred ways of dying. Dam flood vs nuclear radiation. Human driver vs robot. It's a legitimate trade-off between how much you value likeliness vs method. It's annoying that many people don't (or won't) separate those ideas.
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Bo one is hiding behind victims of other disasters. What you are doing though is unsubstantiated fear mongering. And I just applied your unsubstantiated fear mongering to a different power source. For some reason you didn't like it.
What you are doing is called whataboutism. Nobody is arguing for making dams less safe on purpose. Nor are they the topic.
Here are your words: "If your business model requires hundreds of emergency workers to heroically dive on the grenade once every couple of years to stop the disaster..."
I just applied that same fear-mongering reasoning to a power source whose model is quite literally what you described. Not as whatsboutism, but yo show how flawed and weak your readoning is.
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What you are doing is called whataboutism. Nobody is arguing for making dams less safe on purpose. Nor are they the topic.
Don't use terms you don't understand. Here are your words: "If your business model requires hundreds of emergency workers to heroically dive on the grenade once every couple of years to stop the disaster..." I just applied that same fear-mongering reasoning to a power source whose model is quite literally what you described. Not as whatsboutism, but yo show how flawed and weak your readoning is.
Chernobyl being a disaster that was narrowly avoided by thousands of workers shortening or straight up sacrificing their lives to stop it.
You're trying to pretend that the USSR's offici numbers about deaths are the worst a disaster could ever get.
I'm completely fine with you advocating for a Hydropower Regulatory Commission that holds hydro projects to the same standards by the way, sounds great. Similar for ending coal.
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Do you need to take turns touching it for it to be mishandled, stolen, have some accident during transport, leak in the biosphere, the soil, rivers, or underground waters, spread as air particles, be used in a dirt bomb, and several other ways besides?
> and several other ways besides? As of March 2023, there are 422 operable power reactors in the world. Additionally, there are 58 reactors under construction and 104 reactors planned [1] We've had nuclear plants for over 50-60 years now. We've also had nuclear reactors in ships, submarines etc. How many of your amazing spy-novel-level scenarios have happened in reality? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comm…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/may/05/radioact...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-64512297
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/15/asia/missing-lost-radioac...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/16/un-nuclear-wat...
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Why don't you enlighten us then? You are saying my comparison is not apples and apples. So, in your opinion, if we look at long lived nuclear waste, did the weapons programs produce more such waste than the civilian reactors, or less? Also, I'm saying it would make sense to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel produced by the civilian reactors at the WIPP repository? Are you saying this does not make sense? Why?
You're welcome to prove your initial assertion now that you're admitting how facile the comparison was. You're also now asserting that weapons waste is handled in a perfectly fine way suitable for orders of magnitude more long lived waste in the same breath you imply they're far more irresponsible.
During the Cold War, the US has produced about 100 tons of Plutonium for weapons purposes.
Here's the quote from [1]
> Between 1944 and 1988, the United States built special reactors to make about 100 metric tons of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The reactors created the highly radioactive plutonium by bombarding uranium fuel rods with neutrons. Each time a uranium atom changed to a plutonium atom, more neutrons were released, causing a chain reaction. The process continued until the majority of the uranium atoms were converted to plutonium, thus ending the chain reaction. At this point, the fuel rods are said to be spent (used up) and they were removed from the reactor.
> Workers used strong acids to dissolve the plutonium from the fuel rods. This process left behind more than 100 million gallons of hazardous liquid waste. It is called mixed waste because it contains both hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials. The Department of Energy is working to safely cleanup and dispose of these nuclear weapons production wastes
Although this "mixed waste" is not identical with the civilian spent nuclear fuel, the problem of long lived radionuclides is the same. If this waste can be disposed at the WIPP facility, then the spent fuel can too.
Did I satisfy your high standards of debate?
[1] https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-weapons-production-waste
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Democracy. Sounds banal, but it's all we got. Nuclear triggers some primal fear. The safety regulations have become table stakes, unfortunately.
Some people might be fearful but the real problem remains: Nuclear can be safe, cheap and built quickly. Pick two at best.
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The Oak Ridge National Laboratory MSRE that produced power safely from 1965-1969 is no fantasy, but a counter example, both to the fantasy claim and the water claim.
Except the design has countless flaws that make it impossible to actually deploy and when producing a meaningful amount of power (carefully avoided during the self described dog and pony shows) skates on the edge of prompt criticality which would destroy the building well before the freeze plug melted.
Educate us. How does it do those bad things? Where can we read about them?