Also, fission reactors make phenomenal sense on aircraft carriers, submarines, etc.
We have too many people to hydrate, too many crops to water in order to feed them, and not enough water. At some point widespread desalination is probably inevitable, but that requires a lot of energy.
Or the public could accept a reduction in their standard of living, but that’s likely not happening without a civil war.
Of course, all that is made possible by our pants-on-head stupid water rights laws.
This might be true, but desalination is not without it's own externalities (not counting energy usage). The primary one I am thinking of is the increase in salinity and heat in the local area killing sea life. These issues may be possible to avoid with limited use of desalination today, but a significant increase in volume may reach a point where things like dilution and cooling by mixing does not have the desired effect.
We'll also need somewhere to put all that salt. It'd be best to stop the largest wastes of the clean water that we have. We have plenty of water for people and food. We just have to stop the wasteful practices of industry and force them to be more efficient and responsible even though it will eat into their profits.
I suspect what we'll actually do is what we always do. Innovate our way into a higher standard of living while simultaneously elevating the poorest people out of poverty and finding novel ways to feed, clothe and house our population.
It's funny how persistent malthusians are in the face of evidence to the contrary.
It’s possible that some kind of technological miracle rescues us, but it seems more likely to me that we follow the pattern of catabolic collapse seen in the Bronze Age, Easter Island, and Europe in the Dark Ages. Civilization may rebound, sure, but humans have a history of overextension followed by decline (as do all animals).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CXj0AGuh4c
I wouldn't worry about it, and have a wonderful day. =3
One is currently a problem, the other isn't.
"Nuclear fission: the worst energy source, except for almost all the other ones"
If you grill, use charcoal because it is short-term carbon cycle neutral.
We have one of the largest global coal deposits, but it is also one of the most contaminated natural hot heavy metal sources currently known. Indeed, the natural run off has already closed many water wells for small towns in the area. =3
In areas with natural Arsenic accumulation (or Acid rain run off), farmers will sometimes place rusting iron equipment in the water ways to reduce metals accumulating in the topsoil.
With low rainfall the evaporated well-water problem can certainly be a serious concern. =3
Hoes does this work and related to the arsenic and acid rain?
https://wedc-knowledge.lboro.ac.uk/resources/conference/26/w...
Best of luck =3
Corollary: Every sailor knows most vessels are sunk sooner or later.
Aircraft carriers and Submarines are not civilian infrastructure, and if they sink offshore where no can live... will usually pose less of a problem like buoyant waste barrels popping up later.
We are in the age of bargain conflicts, where throwing gold bricks at adversaries makes less sense strategically. =3
Why are people still proposing this antiquated 20th century storage technology instead of just building the newer reactor types that not only don't have this problem but are the best way to get rid of the long-lived isotopes we already have from 20th century reactor designs?
The answer to what you do with isotopes with long half lives is that you put them in a reactor that turns them into isotopes with shorter half lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUHuX-Gbenc
Also, the billions of dollars boondoggle reactor projects that never delivered is a hard sell. "Trust me bro" isn't enough anymore. lol =3
As a side note, the CANDU are famously bad designs known to develop heavy maintenance costs even to remain operational. Yes these can run on garbage fuel, but only because other designs could never tolerate such waste.
It is a teachable moment about legacy designs having unintended benefits as well. =3
What does that have to do with how the US can deal with spent fuel? The reactors that consume spent fuel are ordinary power generating reactors rather than small research reactors and the US already has nuclear weapons.
> As a side note, the CANDU are famously bad designs known to develop heavy maintenance costs even to remain operational
The CANDU design is from the 1960s. It's not what you would actually use for a new project, it's an empirical demonstration that reactors that run on spent fuel are a real thing that actually exist rather than merely a theoretical possibility. There are also modern designs under construction in Europe and the same company is partnering with a US company to permanently destroy some of the US government's cold war era plutonium.
Unlike France, the US did not use a closed-loop multi-grade fuel cycle for economic reasons.
>an empirical demonstration that reactors that run on spent fuel
It is more complex, as running on low-grade fuel is not the same as running on spent-fuel.
However, China's recent Thorium reactor facility is interesting, and it would be neat to see some real data on its output. The US shuttered their own facility a long time back, but it is unclear why the research was effectively abandoned. There probably was a legitimate reason, but who knows for sure. =3
Those are the existing reactors. The premise is building new ones of a different design.
> It is more complex, as running on low-grade fuel is not the same as running on spent-fuel.
It has to be accounted for but it's not some kind of impossible sorcery.
> The US shuttered their own facility a long time back, but it is unclear why the research was effectively abandoned. There probably was a legitimate reason, but who knows for sure.
There is a lot of politics involved in energy in general and nuclear in particular.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle_in_France#C...
There's nothing obvious I could find that I could find that would confirm it. Could you cite something?
My point was, few organizations have ever shown actual success with what they claimed would happen. Thus, arguing sites will hold for 75 years let alone 30k years is a fools errand. Water fills holes in the ground, and will likely continue to do so in the future. =3
https://armscontrolcenter.org/nuclear-waste-issues-in-the-un...
https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/acts-and-regulations/event-r...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...
There are dozens of other decay products with various hazardous properties.
Scientific hubris can't be made safe, and societies have proven irresponsible with fuel life-cycle management. =3
Great, that means it is not very radioactive, and an alpha emitter, so unless you ingest it is not particularly harmful.
> societies have proven irresponsible with fuel life-cycle management
Do you have evidence that the spent nuclear fuel from power stations has killed people?
Did you mean intentional Polonium 210 exposure from decay chains, medical mistakes, or unintentional worker exposure to hot garbage.
I could have a look for you, but Google should already give several reasonable results to keep one entertained. =3
Indeed, one persons opinion is not really all that important, but one is alive because of decisions made long before they were born.
>Because plutonium sounds scary?
Which of the 14 isotopes are you referring too? In general, synthetic isotopes unknown in our evolutionary biology are far more toxic in trace exposures.
Some people don't get a chance to learn form their mistakes. Best of luck =3
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/aug/09/rorycarroll . Or does the biochemistry of Pu particularly depend on the isotope?
I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I was under the impression that if something is radioactive enough to be a hazard then it's radioactive enough to generate power.
Is that not the case?
Only under certain circumstances is it financially worth harnessing this power. I think of space probes and their RTGs. They use alpha emitters like Pu-238, to minimize the shielding requirements.
As for the rest of the stuff, dry casks are good enough. Reprocessing isn’t currently economical while uranium is so cheap, although the vitrification of the fission products can help immobilize the worst radiation emitters, but really the UO2 structure does a decent job of keeping things put.
Spent fuel with complex decay isotopes must be kept under deep cooling pools with criticality control precautions. From a chemistry perspective, complex isotope products like Plutonium are more obscure to evolutionary biology, so it is often much more dangerous even in accidental trace exposures.
I am just a sentient turnip that prefers distributed Solar products. Have a great day =3
edit: Please don't down peoples karma for being crass. If it was a honest question they deserve an honest answer.