An interesting watch: Thorium Reactors
Comment on Reactor goes brrr
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks agoNuclear waste. Long term storage of said waste
Solved issue, caskets can be stored above ground and take up very little space, buried if it starts to take up too much surface space
Dependence on raw materials that are only available in a few places
Thorium rather than uranium fuel solves this
Lack of economic viability
Just not true
Lack of clear timelines for development of new technologies
Also not true
Oh, and the old blowy uppy thing, of course.
Seriously not an issue these days, we don’t build them and run them like the Soviet Union did anymore
lost_faith@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
roguetrick@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I didn’t watch the whole thing but his dismissal of uranium 233 as “hard” to turn into a bomb is flat out wrong. It has many of the properties of plutonium 239 and would be perfectly fine for an implosion fusion/fission device. You just need to chemically reprocess the fuel from a reactor to get it, just like they did with plutonium. The first Soviet fusion bomb was uranium 233 for christ sakes. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-233
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If you think nuclear waste is a “solved issue” you just show how little you understand the subject matter. So you’re going to store nuclear waste above ground for a couple of millennia? How’s that going to work out? And thorium reactors might some day become a viable technology. But that is at best decades away. That is not a solution for any present day problem. And what about all those old and aging legacy reactors that are being kept running beyond their design lifespan? Surely nothing can go wrong there.
But it doesn’t matter. Despite all the irrational exuberance of the nukebros it’s just not going to happen. The economics were never there and still aren’t.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Literally yes, it’s not just left out in the open air, they’re stored in specialized containers that use inert gas and concrete to block the radiation from getting out. They can also then be buried beneath the ground for extra protection
It is most certainly not decades away at best unless fear mongering managed to slow research more than it already has done, but that’s not an issue with the technology at all
You update them, which is how they’re operating beyond their initial designed lifespan. Current idea in the field is to replace aging uranium reactors with molten thorium as they’re apparently pretty simple to convert over
To quote you on this topic:
Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
You’re telling me humanity will able to manage nuclear waste for hundreds to thousands of years, given the fall of multiple great societies over the last few thousand years?
It’s not even a solved problem how to communicate danger with signs[1], and you think knowledge about where nuclear waste is being stored will be preserved for a thousand years?
I really envy you for your optimism in humanity.
[1] youtu.be/lOEqzt36JEM
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
You put it in a hole, done. Humanity is capable of that, for sure
We won’t ever know if it is/can be, due to not ever knowing what future societiesoght perceive. We’re doing our best, and can rightfully assume even a fully wiped humanity will learn to stay away from things with our warning symbols on them after a few die from radiation, if that even occurs
You can also pour shit tons of concrete and other stuff around it to make it clear even without signs that something you do not want is in here