any chance to turn Nuclear reactors around with a safer Reactor

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Shakespeare had the solution to resuming the deployment of nukes.

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John Larkin   Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

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John Larkin

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom

Building "safer" reactors will have similar problems to building reactors of the usual type - they're touted by the firms that are into designing and building reactors, and the politicians who are paid by those firms but know little about nuclear energy, but will be viewed with some justified skepticism by the public who in the main don't want reactors of any type built near them, and by private capital/investment, who will view them with some justified skepticism about their ability to ever generate them a net profit

Reply to
bitrex

"potentially including nuclear reactors, which emit no carbon but are seen as risky because of a few major accidents."

And many many minor ones and close calls, not just the few major ones.

Problem with trying to sell the public on "safer" reactors is that the public believes the nuclear energy lobby and the private firms invested in nuclear power are all full of shit at this point; that they'll tell whoever needs to be told that whatever they're selling is "safer" to make a buck, whether it's true or not, and that that's the way they've always operated worldwide since the beginning.

Reply to
bitrex

The "Chernobyl" HBO docu-drama series didn't become one of the most popular mini-series of all time in the US and Russia because the US and Russia public wants to re-kindle a love affair with nuclear energy like an old ex-girlfriend you're still enamored with, it's because they think "Ah they told those poor bastards it was 'safe', too", and they don't really see a large distinction between how the Soviet nuclear energy government/industry cabal operated to how the US one operates and vice versa.

Reply to
bitrex

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Ever since I read that book about using Thorium fuel, I've been watching for some sort of announcement. Nothing yet (10 yrs.?)

Reply to
Wond

A decently engineered nuke is already safe. Greenies have made nukes too expensive because they don't want the people to have affordable energy.

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John Larkin   Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

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John Larkin

nuclear energy has always had a shitty ROI, it's even shittier now with natural gas as cheap as it is. Greenies didn't make natural gas cheap

Reply to
bitrex

They don't like NG either. Every 5th atom is carbon.

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John Larkin   Highland Technology, Inc   trk 

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John Larkin

nuclear has only achieved high market penetration in countries with far more socialist and environmentalist leanings than the US e.g. France and Japan.

About 40% of France's fresh water reserves go to cool their reactors; that water is not free-market available as fresh water to sell immediately it is reserved as coolant by fiat, the plants get it first and the market gets whatever is left over.

Reply to
bitrex

Public thinks all the wingnut lobbyists and engineers for the nuclear energy biz are well-compensated professional liars who will gladly say anything is safe for a buck.

If anything goes wrong they're off the hook and the taxpayer is on the hook to cover it - by law!

Reply to
bitrex

I have also wmdered about this.

As I understand it the thorium reactor needs a proton particle accellerator to hit a target that then releases some neutrons that then starts a single nuclear reaction in thoium.

Of course, the plant output must power the particle accellerator.

After long time operation, there are going to be some short ime (hundreds or thousands of years) isotopes in the thorium target.

The good thing is that as soon you close the particle accellerator, the the decay heat does not melt the thorium core into the groundwater.

Reply to
upsidedown

The technological hurdles are substantial, the only groups with real interest in funding overcoming them are the utility companies, and they don't see a financial advantage in funding the R&D at this time.

does that sum up why there hasn't been an "announcement" adequately?

Reply to
bitrex

Old nuclear weapon owners feared of the spreading of nuclear weapons and thus allowed only low enrichment uranium to be used in commercial reactors. For this reason, commercial reactors contains tons of (contaminated) uranium.

Now that nuclear weapons have been spread all over the planet, is there any sensible reason for low enriched uranium ?

Reply to
upsidedown

Terrorists and the Islamic State et. al. don't have them yet and it should stay that way, it was never about trying to make it impossible for anyone but the Soviet Union and US to have them.

Even North Korea is in some sense a "rational actor" by comparison.

Reply to
bitrex

That is to say if they'd actually "spread all over the planet" someone would have used one (again) by now.

Reply to
bitrex

If you insist of building nuclear plants inland you need lake/river fresh water, but as soon as you build the plants at the coast, there are no such problems.

Reply to
upsidedown

That's not how they're counted. The carbons themselves are numbered sequentially.

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Cursitor Doom

You seem to use the same tactics like CO2 alarmists against people who not blatantly accept IPCC claims. There might be other reasons for questioning the greenie approach.

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upsidedown

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