Totally Concur, This is the winner. I don't buy papa's rabid pro nuclear stance at all. To buy it, I would have to ignore the fact that Chernobyl occurred.
Nuclear Power is safe. Fuck you if you disagree.
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Totally Concur, This is the winner. I don't buy papa's rabid pro nuclear stance at all. To buy it, I would have to ignore the fact that Chernobyl occurred.
Totally disagree; this is the Loser.
papa's the only one here with actual knowledge of the subject and you'd be a fool to say you know better.
Chernobyl happening taught us a lot... And subsequently we have build 2nd and 3rd generation reactors that meltdown more and more safely each generation.
For Chernobyl to happen at all, a bunch of really, really outrageous mistakes had to occur first. Such as running stupid, risky drills after midnight with a sleepy skeleton crew while unknown problems already existed.
EVEN THEN, if this type of thing was normal, and we still were using dirty 1st-gen reactors, the yearly death rate would STILL be far, far, far below the rate of deaths that drilling for oil and digging/fraking for Coal cause us right now.
So for you to be afraid of nuclear power, you're pretty much siding with the MUCH greater of two evils. Like choosing Chuck Manson over a check forger to be your best friend.
TerraPower is still a non-proven company. I've seen their technical presentation, and they still can't answer many simple questions about their design. They aren't "constructing" anything right now; if you think they are, you're entirely mistaken. They don't have a chance of getting NRC approval in the US for their design, and that's why they're marketing to China, primarily.
Gates has invested not necessarily because he believes in the company, but because he wants the technology to be used in Africa to supply water and electricity.
No. It was defunded because Harry Reid was Senate Majority Leader, and he used his clout when Obama was ramping up his Health Care bill. Reid knew that Obama needed his support to get the health care bill to a vote, and worked to get Yucca defunded in exchange.
a) some other people here actually worry about nuclear stuff for a living, so he's not the only one.
b) the Chernobyl accident is actually even more absurd than you described it. So many ridiculous decisions had to be made in order for the meltdown to occur that the real story actually reads like a movie script. Chernobyl could not, and would not occur today unless it was a deliberate act of sabotage.
That's because a Nuclear plant isn't ever "proven" until it is online.
Hmm. I once read an article somewhere that talked about their scaled plant in Canada. I can't find it right now but I'm sure I read that they have seen the TWR work on a small scale, perhaps in a big lab.
Why is that? Oil lobby or are they somehow dangerous?
I can't find any reference to Africa; he toutes the design of Terrapower personally in his last TED talk... Here's a businessweek article on that: Bill Gates Goes Nuclear - BusinessWeek
out of curiosity why do you say that? It's definitely non-standard, but that doesn't mean it couldn't get approval
Right, and their design isn't even close to being online. That said, moving or arranging the fuel assemblies is beyond complex, but if anyone can figure out how to do it, a bunch of software engineers from some of the smartest software companies in the world will get it done.
AFAIK, they don't have anything close to operating besides a bench-scale model, and a bench-scale model doesn't generate anything.
The oil lobby has nothing to do with the NRC. The design isn't dangerous in theory, but they have to be able to keep the cladding on the fuel at temperatures something like 10 times hotter than a typical reactor. Until they can prove that, they'll never get NRC approval. The only way to prove that is to build and operate at least one of these reactors, which is why they're looking to China, India, maybe Pakistan, where the regulations on nuclear are much less strict.
Their tech/PR guys are selling the plants for their usefulness in providing on-location electricity, in particular, in Africa.
As above, the TerraPower design relies on some pretty clever fuel management practices and until the efficacy of those practices is proven, TerraPower won't waste their money and brand submitting an app for review.
Kind of a dog chasing its tail argument, I know, but, until they submit they can't be approved, and they won't submit, because they don't think they'll get approved.
Now, small modular reactors, that's where the real future of nuclear is, IMO.
How bad is it for you to sit constantly in a chest X-ray? I know its not bad in flashes, but at what point does it get dangerous?
Ahh fuck it. I'm rooting for solar again then.
I like the idea of using solar power, hell they have nice looking solar panel roof shingles. It would be great to save money, the problem is that it cost so much money that if you can afford to get them, your not worried about the money you would save off having them.
It needs to get more cost effective.
SOLAR PANEL ROOF TILES | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building
I would imagine the measure would be the sum of the exposure over the total period.
Oh and for those who are interested and want to read more about it, Coal power plants expose our environment to far more radiation than nuclear power plants.
Those are fantastic. Developers need to embrace this kind of tech in all their new builds. Imagine if every single house in a new subdivision had these? I've been watching a bit of the series Grand Designs Revisited on UK television and those that put in even a modest solar array on their roofs are getting between £1500 and £3000 back annually by selling their surplus instead of paying monthly electrical bills. We don't have to build massive solar arrays in the deserts, we just need to better use the roof surfaces that we already have available to us.
Frank N. von Hippel, a U.S. scientist, has estimated that the release of radioactivity is about one-tenth that from the Chernobyl disaster and the contaminated area is also about one-tenth that that of Chernobyl; he also estimates "on the order of 1,000" people will die from cancer as a result of their exposure to radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
Radiation effects from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Radiation effects from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Re: Solar
I've since changed my stance and lost all optimism.
The Oil lobby is too strong and have decades of experience battling solar panel production. Simply put, don't expect prices to drop enough to make it affordable for any type of practical home use.
However LENR will be a surprise to them... And it should out-perform oil and coal both right off the bat.
Here's hoping they haven't found a way to silence LENR... Because if letting Rossi's scam scare everyone away is their best play, then they don't understand the physicists of the world very well.
I've since changed my stance and lost all optimism.
The Oil lobby is too strong and have decades of experience battling solar panel production. Simply put, don't expect prices to drop enough to make it affordable for any type of practical home use.
However LENR will be a surprise to them... And it should out-perform oil and coal both right off the bat.
Here's hoping they haven't found a way to silence LENR... Because if letting Rossi's scam scare everyone away is their best play, then they don't understand the physicists of the world very well.