Be glad you don't live in Japan Friday

Cleo · 2011-03-17, 11:06 AM

I still think the huge concrete containment domes over US nuclear plants in the US, like the ones at Turkey Point south of me, offer far more protection than the secondary steel vessels around the Japanese ones. I know that I don't worry about the ones south of me and hope they go ahead with plans to add two more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tickler

http://www.physorg.com/news145561984.html

That look great but I'm not sure that the public would ever go for it.

Toby · 2011-03-17, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cleo

...I don't worry about the ones south of me and hope they go ahead with plans to add two more.

The only issue I have with building more nuclear plants is the disposal of the spent fuel. They still haven't figured that out, and in the mean time, it sits in pools accumulating.

Cleo · 2011-03-17, 12:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toby

The only issue I have with building more nuclear plants is the disposal of the spent fuel. They still haven't figured that out, and in the mean time, it sits in pools accumulating.

I think there is already a solution, big hole deep underground, but the public won't agree on anything so as a result it sits in "temporally" pools.

Bill · 2011-03-17, 07:26 PM

The small format reactors are interesting, but I've yet to see really convincing working prototypes - has anyone else?

I thought the pebble bed reactor concept was interesting too.

As I understood it tho, uranium is the limiting factor for a nuclear electricity economy. There's enough uranium for a while, but of we wanted to produce planetary scale amounts of nuclear electricity the struggle for uranium would relatively quickly mirror the current competition for oil.

The proposed solution is a plutonium economy based on breeder reactors - and a plutonium economy has a lot of scary problems asscoiated with it.

Linkster · 2011-03-17, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toby

The only issue I have with building more nuclear plants is the disposal of the spent fuel. They still haven't figured that out, and in the mean time, it sits in pools accumulating.

Actually most plants have instituted their own storage vaults on-site that gets the fuel out of the pools into a dry storage cask

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes	Rate This Thread
Switch to Linear Mode Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode	Rate This Thread:

2011-03-17, 07:26 PM	#4
Bill Selling porn allows me to stay in a constant state of Bliss - ain't that a trip! Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 3,914	The small format reactors are interesting, but I've yet to see really convincing working prototypes - has anyone else? I thought the pebble bed reactor concept was interesting too. As I understood it tho, uranium is the limiting factor for a nuclear electricity economy. There's enough uranium for a while, but of we wanted to produce planetary scale amounts of nuclear electricity the struggle for uranium would relatively quickly mirror the current competition for oil. The proposed solution is a plutonium economy based on breeder reactors - and a plutonium economy has a lot of scary problems asscoiated with it.