Well whoda thunk it. And of course oodles cheaper than renewables although nuclear is being touted as the 'thinking man's Green' by the spin merchants in the industry.
Of course anyone contemplating nuclear with more than half a brain would realise that once you have nuclear, you neither need nor want renewables.
Just no one quite has the guts to say it.
This is taking into account the long term storage of radioactive 'stuff' both from expended fuel and decommissioning of the plant after its use by date is it? My feeling is that the banks of big rivers will have modified submarine reactors along them and when its finished they will shove it on a big barge and sink it in a deep ocean trench. Brian
of course
Well no madder than leagues of deranged pixies on dust swinging on the blades of wind turbines, I suppose.
Interesting article. The actual source is Lloyds register, for anyone uncertain whether to follow a "nuclear" link.
Not an organisation which would want to risk its reputation for neutrality in technical matters.
In article , Brian Gaff writes
Yes
And return it whence it came.
Sorry Brian, but the Russians are way ahead of you:
Not all nuclear power produces problematic waste. Thorium for example (which decays to Lead after 70 years).
Oh dear. Ignorance everywhere.
U232 has a 70 year half life, which means its around 700 years before its all gone, and in the process its generating massively dangersous hard gamma rays.
Gimme plutonium any day of the week.
Short half lives= highly radioactive.
The myth of course is that long live 'waste' is highly radioactive. By definition, it isn't.
That presumably means it's warm. Stick it in a (very) solid box, and use it for district heating? Or use it for trans-Jovian space probes...
Andy
Not necessarily. As it produces gammas rather than alphas like Pu-238, these will not be stopped in the U232 itself but will likely flow out and present a danger to those around. Even in a solid box. The gammas presumably wouldn't do the electronics on your spacecraft much good either.
Pu-238 could in principle be shielded with a cardboard box, but as any quantity of it would likely be red-hot from the alpha production, better use a metal one.
One of the reasons Thorium reactors are touted as being 'safe against terrorism' is that the actual fissile, as opposed to fertile, component is so massively radioactive compared with e.g. plutonium or U235, that people manipulating it would probably die.
This of course is why people then claim 'the uranium reaction was chosen over thorium because it bred better bomb material. 'Safer waste' would be just as good a way to say the same thing.
My popint being that all nuclear reactions are unique, all have problems and to claim that one is 'safer' than another is pretty naive in the face of such complexity.
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