A long-abandoned US nuclear technology is making a comeback in China: A thorium-fueled reactor is the latest idea being revived after getting shelved in the mid-20th century.
A long-abandoned US nuclear technology is making a comeback in China
Imagine how much more efficient nuclear power would be if we didn't let our nuclear nightmares take over and have us stop or severely restrict it...
Sorry but this is the most lunatic comment I've seen in a while. Why be careful with anything right? Let's bring back lead, CFCs and all the stuff we have band because we were careful.
Fact is, Nucular is extremely expensive, hard to control, dangerous and still has no real waste solution. People pushing for it either just repeat influencers with no own original thought or hoping to make a dollar on the massive subsidies the governments will have to invest, if this becomes a reality.
IMO, any energy plan needs to have reduced consumption as priorities 1-10 and past that nuclear isn't always worse than renewables.
Let's bring back lead, CFCs and all the stuff we have band because we were careful
Lead, CFCs, Asbestos and the like have all been banned for consumer use, but that's not what we're talking about here. Being unhealthy doesn't mean they have no application and can't be carefully used.
still has no real waste solution
At scale, neither do renewables. Solar panels are a sandwich of dozens of trace elements, heavy metals, plastic and everything else. Nitpicking nuclear here is silly because the amount of waste generated is the least by an order of magnitude. Keep waste generation under control and its management basically an afterthought.
Nucular is extremely expensive
These conversations always get bogged down in $/kW, which is not what we should be worried about. Nuclear has a lower lifetime carbon footprint than renewables, which is worth the extra spend in our current climate crisis. It's an important tool for sustainable energy usage; you can't use renewables as a drop in replacement for everything.
There are plenty of waste solutions. Most nuclear waste is actually short lived, either a few days or a few years. Most waste is not the long life stuff, the waste issue has been blown way out of proportion by groups that are simply against nuclear in general, not using facts based on reality.
In the UK for instance (readily available numbers): 94% – low-level waste (LLW) ~6% – intermediate-level waste (ILW) <1% – high-level waste (HLW)
Numbers will be similar elsewhere for uranium based reactors.
The bigger issue that no one ever wants to talk about is how much other radioactive material is not accounted for from other power sources. People talk.about radiation from nuclear obviously, but what about the nuclear material ejected directly into the atmosphere from other power plants?
For instance, the amount of ash produced by coal power plants in the United States is estimated at 130,000,000 tons per year, and fly ash is estimated to release 100 times more radiation than an equivalent nuclear plant. Meanwhile, a 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year. And remember, it is the airborne radioactive elements causing most issues during incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima.
If a nuclear plant released the amount of radioactive material a coal plant does in just an hour it would be an international nuclear incident.
Half the reason it ends up so expensive is because no one has experience building them, and so they always end up over budget when they do get made (at least in the US)
And the danger is vastly overblown. Far more have died as the results of accidents in other power industries then as a result of nuclear. It’s very safe when properly regulated (and not run by clowns aka Chernobyl)
This is a perfect immitation of the ridiculous things people say about nuclear power and have been since the 1960s.
Fact is, Nucular is extremely
Nuclear* FTFY
Nuclear is expensive
Yes, but our continued use of fossil fuels will be exponentially more expensive with regards to global warming.
Nuclear power is hard to control, dangerous
No, it is very safe and well known, Chornobyl, TMI and Fukashima are the major accidents in nuclear power, TMI was caused by a badly designed and missunderstood control system, Chornobyl was caused by a bad reactor design combined with a culture of secrecy, Fukashima was caused by a natural disaster combined with a bad location.
We have learned from this and modern nuclear power plants are safe to the point of being boring.
Nuclear power has no real waste solution
This is just plain wrong. Dealing with nuclear waste is simple and a solved problem.
You dig a deep hole, put the waste in protected caskets and backfill with clay, done.
As a Swede I am a huge proponent of Sweden/Finland/Norway building massive nuclear waste storage facilities and taking on the responsibility for taking care of the global nuclear waste, we have a stable bedrock, stable political systems, plenty of unused land and have experience building underground structures, a nuclear waste facility for global waste would also create jobs.
You claim that proponents of nuclear power just parrot influencers with no original thought or are invested in nuclear power.
The same could absolutely be said of the anti-nuclear supporters, you keep repeating the same old arguments with no original thought for your self, and what is worse is that plenty of the anti-nuclear propaganda is backed by oil/coal/gas companies.
I am not an idiot, I realize that the future of energy is with renewables, I have seen articles about how nations have had days where they are only using renewables to power themselves.
But I don't believe we should be waiting to shut down fossil fuel plants until renewables are ready, I believe we need to design a drop in replacement for fossil fuel plants now, not tomorrow, not next year, not in a decade, now. And the only resonable way is nuclear power.
Nuclear power is not the power of the future, it is an interim solution as we transition to renewables, meaning we can stop using fossils much faster than else.
So, let's imagine if the idiotic overreaction of the "Atomkraft, Nein danke" movement had failed, and we had built nuclear plants rather than coal, gas and oil, I absolutely believe we would have not seen as big of a rise in global temperatures in the last decades as we have seen, we would have better air and water, and it would just be better.
The US didn't use the technology, because there still too much coal and fossil fuel to burn
Or ya know, thorium reactors work by actually decaying into uranium-232, then we’re back to the waste issue.
Except for the fact that you can use the Uranium 233 as fuel itself, and you can't make weaponizable plutonium out of it. Sure you've still got the waste problem, but the thorium reactor produces less waste than an equivalent uranium reactor.
The whole reason it was never developed was because uranium had been developed for the use of nuclear weapons to begin with, so they already had all that work done and then they segued that into power production. They would have to do a lot of research and development, which costs money that nobody wanted to spend, for a program with no military purpose and therefore the government cared a lot less about it. Because we live in fucking Post World War 2 America, and if the military budget can't be tapped for it then the government can't be bothered.
That said, the petroleum industry is probably more responsible. They sure fought tooth and claw against the development of renewables for decades on end. Gawd forbid the rich assholes at the top have one fewer million dollars they'll never be able to spend in their bank accounts.
As usual, greed and power are making things worse for everybody. But hey you go ahead and believe it's because the radioactive waste is the problem.
Okay, but how big is the issue normalised to MWh produced?
and thorium is much more radioactive than uranium.
it wasnt shelved tho I bought stocks related to thorium years ago because its been known the goal is to use it and reactors being made are going to use it, not really effective since they stockpiled already and dont need to mine more