Posted on 05/27/2023 7:27:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Generation IV reactors will completely nullify any sincere concern about nuclear waste. What is left over amounts to a few pounds and has a half-life of a few decades.
“Generation IV reactors will completely nullify any sincere concern about nuclear waste. What is left over amounts to a few pounds and has a half-life of a few decades.”
Citation, please.
If the technology works, they can reprocess all the stored fuel that is currently in Yucca Mountain and reprocess it to near nothing. That’s what makes Generation IV so vital for the nuclear industry.
But you can’t have a neo-feudalist society with cheap, abundant energy.
Wikipedia?! Really?!?
Even it admits, “No precise definition of a Generation IV reactor exists.” Much less a selected candidate... Much less commercial plans... Much less getting through the licensing and public comment process... Much less getting past all the lawsuits and legal roadblock from leftists... Much less a company actually deciding to build such a plant.
In fact a solution for nuclear waste has been know since the 1980s, but politicians and kakistocrats have thwarted the solution at every turn, eventually demanding scientists accurately predict the stored rad waste safety for the next one million years.
And the billions of $$$ from a surcharge on ratepayers for their electricty generated by nuclear power for the last four decades to find a waste storage solution? It’s been spent.
Well, that ship has sailed...
I have a childhood friend whose parents (yes, both of them) were nuclear physicists. They are well into retirement now. I know that they say nuclear energy is the cleanest stuff out there, but that people are very afraid, largely because of 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. I haven’t talked with them about this, per se, but in general, I would say that they believe nuclear energy is clean, safe, and reliable. Not trying to put words in their mouths, but that’s the way I recall our discussions on the topic in the last 15 years.
William Winpisinger was the “Chuck Schumer” of professionally angry, young, and then older, socialists who sought control over the AFL-CIO in opposition to Jimmy Hoffa (Teamsters, before the divorce from the AFL-CIO) and in opposition to George Meany.
I’m a proponent of nuclear power and for years have absorbed as much information on the subject as a lay person is able. That said there are big drawbacks with waste. Many smart people say Thorium reactors are the solution to the waste problem as a thorium reactor will burn waste fuel down to a small percentage.
Problems is, there are no working Thorium reactors. It’s all theory. If this country had spent the money we have on the unworkable green energy programs on reactor technology we very well have been the world leaders in a technology that leaves very little waste but produces massive amounts of energy to power the future.
Instead the Marxist communists led the sheep down a garden path of unworkable green energy that will end in the destruction of our quality of life. It’s all going according to plan. They fill their pockets while subjugating us to satisfy their power fetish.
“If the technology works, they can reprocess all the stored fuel that is currently in Yucca Mountain “
What fuel stored in Yucca Mountain? The Biden Administration has cancelled the project.
I thought they had some there.
My bad, if that isn’t the case.
When I attended the University of Arizona in the 1970’s, the anti-nuke kooks were on campus trying to stir up everyone to stop the Palo Verde nuclear power plant from being built. They were on campus every day.
The plant has been in operation for over 30 years without any problems that I’m aware of.
Best solution for high level non-recyclable nuclear waste is to bury it in a subduction zone on the ocean floor. No one will be able to access it there, and it will be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years, until it is incinerated below the tectonic plates.
The plan was that when Yucca Mountain got stocked, a reprocessing facility would start up.
Reactor fuel rods are pulled when about 1/2 of the energy has been spent and then it’s up to the facility to store the fuel rod assemblies for eternity.
Imagine that every time your car got to 1/2 tank, you went and all the remaining fuel was pumped out, you were sold a full tank of new fuel and you had to pay to store what was pumped out for eternity.
We had a waste reprocessing facility that Carter shut down on day 1.
State run media and the democrats (redundant) would have you believe that Yucca Mountain was just a big hole excavated in the ground where bulldozers were just going to push waste into.
Actually plan was to bore holes in the floor of huge tunnels and each fuel assembly would be cased in stainless steel containers that would be labelled as to what it is and where it came from. It would be a bank of raw material for the reprocessing facility.
Most particularly, the life of tritium, necessary for the hydrogen bomb, has very short life and needs to be continually manufactured to replace that which is no longer usable or reliable. This generates a lot of long half-life-cycle waste, if I recall correctly from meetings on it and how to deal with it.
Waste from power plants should not be a concern of the vox populi or the even less-well-informed media, IMHO.
On the other hand, the nuclear physicists that were my professors in college indicated that nuclear power was too dangerous to put into the hands of people who get bored with routine. On a slightly different topic, they also scoffed at the notion that fusion would be a clean source of energy. They said, “My God, man, where do you think all of the heavy elements come from? They come from the solar forge!”.
But you can’t have a neo-feudalist society with cheap, abundant energy
/\
I only disagree with one part of that statement
There’s no “ neo” about it.
We have ogliarch aristocrats that use us as they want
And what was once called guilds are now called unions.
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