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Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#91

Post by nl »

ewoodrich wrote: post #58
y4mi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is very well covered. its trivial to search for sources yourself. as for the lying part: check the timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Fukushima_I_nu...

That's over 28 pages. And I haven't found an obvious example in the few pages I've read so far. Which portions of the article are you referring to?

Yeah, that's pretty useless. This is better:

On August 29, 2002, the government of Japan revealed that TEPCO was guilty of false reporting in routine governmental inspection of its nuclear plants and systematic concealment of plant safety incidents.[1]

(Note that date - 2002!)

As for Fukushima, here's a few links about false statements from TEPCO this year alone:

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201302...

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/07/22/national/tepco-n...

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/07/31/editorials/ye...

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/08/27/national/tepcos-...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Electric_Power_Company#Sa...

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#92

Post by gaius »

coldtea wrote: post #28
ChuckMcM wrote: post #10

My daughter was one of the operators of the TRIGA reactor at Reed college. Some of the students joked it was a Fisher-Price My First Reactor reactor :-) at only 250kW its small as reactors go, but also exceptionally interesting. It is very disappointing how constricted the field of nuclear research is, as it is a demonstrably zero carbon footprint energy source. I understand the emotion that nuclear power evokes in p…

> It is very disappointing how constricted the field of nuclear research is, as it is a demonstrably zero carbon footprint energy source. Yes, if only it didn't have any other footprint...

If you take a sandwich into the control room of a nuclear plant and eat it there and throw the wrapper in the bin, that's "low level nuclear waste". If you do the same in an airliner, your sandwich will be exposed to more radiation! but it's just litter.

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#93

Post by rwmj »

ISL wrote: post #22
s800 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Experimental Gravity? serious. tnx.

We do precision tests of gravity and searches for forces weaker than gravity. (Front page is dated, see publications tab for more recent work) http://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwash/ The most-important experiment we do is to test the Equivalence Principle [1], the idea that if you drop two things in vacuum, they'll fall at the same rate regardless of what they're made from. Results from our lab have shown that, at 1 p…

I would really enjoy a blog post/series about what you're doing. I'm sure you think it's ordinary and slightly boring but you'd surprised how many -- even technical -- people have no idea how you can measure gravity over the breadth of a hair, and would be fascinated by it.

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#94

Post by XorNot »

dredmorbius wrote: post #88
XorNot wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry that was probably more hostile then necessary, but when it comes to nuclear power there is very much a "but what about the waste aspect!" used in a manner which implies all other fuel sources don't have very serious problems as well.

The law of unintended consequences has a damned long arm, that's for sure. Perturbing systems creates long-lived ripple effects. Humans have been tapping into stored carbon equivalent to a few hundred million years of fossil deposits, and ... that's going to have some really long-lived effects. As to what the future holds, my sense is that we're simply not going to have the quantities of free, abundant, and fungible…

See the way I see it, that's asking the wrong question: who cares what civilization is doing 10,000 years from now, if it's lost sufficient record and technology to comprehend nuclear waste?

Even a language change, if accompanied by a technologically advanced civilization, would remember to change it's signs.

Whereas, it is much more likely that if we don't use nuclear power, we'll create catastrophes that lead to that problem to begin with. I'm much more concerned with what happens over the next 10,000 years then at the end of it.

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#95

Post by Daniel_Newby »

snom380 wrote: post #84
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a solved problem. Dilute it with sand until it is about as radioactive as the original ore, melt the sand, and dump the chunks of glass someplace out of the way. Yes, future generations will need to protect themselves from it, but they already need to in huge areas where the ground emits radon.

If that's truly cost effective and feasible, why isn't it being done on a wider scale?

Democracy. The environmental movement uses anti-nuclear propaganda to get votes.

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#96

Post by wazoox »

peterpathname wrote: post #55
pflanze wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean with litter, but isn't nuclear waste storage still an unsolved problem?

here in australia, decades of research and policy development have hit upon a world-class solution to the nuclear waste challenge. We're building a road in a semi-arid remote location, on the traditional lands of a small, disemowered, remote indigenous community. At the end of the road, we plan to build a shed with a barbed wire fence. In return for this inconvenience, the local community will see employment opportun…

In France, they simply used low activity nuclear waste for road beds in the countryside, as supposedly nobody stays long enough on these roads to get any harm from it.

Therefore in the center of France, many, many roads are significantly radioactive. Is it dangerous? Is radioactive matter washed away? What happens to workers doing road repairs? What happens to the rivers, crops and cattle downhill from these roads? Nobody knows and (mostly) nobody cares.

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#98

Post by judk »

coldtea wrote: post #26
ISL wrote: post #8

To make an an HN-relevant analogy: The FDA-hobbling of 23andMe pales in comparison to what it's like to work with nuclear regulatory frameworks and societal concerns regarding nuclear science. When I was an undergrad, DOE was willing to pay the university the entire relicensing and operating costs of the on-campus TRIGA. The university declined, knowing that the requisite environmental impact study for relicensing wo…

> Their opposition has merit; it's easy to point to Fukushima and Chernobyl as major disasters. The disasters are one thing. The constant lying from authorities, government and assigned experts was another. They were caught pants down telling lies and misinforming in handling the Fukusima accident. This breaks trust. And for projects like that, that involve billions of dollars (enough to fuel much payola and greed),…

Even our own revered patio11 got caught as a patsy, repeating propaganda about how perfectly organized and careful the Japanese nuclear industry was.

Anyway, overall, whether the dangers are technical or social, they are still dangers.

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#99

Post by judk »

XorNot wrote: post #63
peterpathname wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here in australia, decades of research and policy development have hit upon a world-class solution to the nuclear waste challenge. We're building a road in a semi-arid remote location, on the traditional lands of a small, disemowered, remote indigenous community. At the end of the road, we plan to build a shed with a barbed wire fence. In return for this inconvenience, the local community will see employment opportun…

This is just garbage. It doesn't matter where you want to put our nuclear waste disposal facility, some group will invent a story about how they're being exploited to have what they'll paint as "landfill" being put on their land. Clearly a much better solution is what we do now, where we store all our low and medium grade nuclear waste in random sheds and basements at universities and hospitals all over the country!

So you are volunteering your backyard to store the radioactive material? Or you are only volunteering someone else's?

Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore

#100

Post by ChuckMcM »

dredmorbius wrote: post #81
ChuckMcM wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point, so let's be precise here. The fact that a reactor is fueled by waste doesn't mean it doesn't create waste or have a waste-disposal aspect. There is nothing in the physics of building nuclear reactors that prevents us from building a reactor that does not leave behind any waste that is either chemically reactive, or even modestly radioactive. No currently implemented reactor designs do that…

There is nothing in the physics of building nuclear reactors that prevents us from building a reactor that does not leave behind any waste First I've every heard of any such proposal. How exactly would you go about stabilizing every last decay product to the level of background radiation? Your statement is equivalent to noting that there's nothing in chemistry which prevents us from building coal-fired power plants w…

Proposed designs go under the heading of 'closed fuel cycle reactors' generally a "fast" reactor (which is using its gamma flux to create new fuel) a reprocessing plant, and the power reactor(s). Such a facility runs "forever" with no radioactive or chemically active byproducts leaving the facility.

Even closed cycle systems generate low level radioactive 'waste' in the sense that things get activated by exposure to radiation. Traditional incineration, like these guys (http://www.nukemgroup.com/fileadmin/pdf/Brochure_Incineratio...) propose, reduces bulk and chemical reactivity, using ionizing radiation from a gamma source (another small reactor like the TRIGA) can move the radioactive byproducts along their decay cycle into short lived isotopes and then inertness.

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