On Wed, 2021-11-24 at 15:47 +1000, Robert Brockway wrote: > How do you feel about using fast breeder reactors to extract more > energy and reduce the nuclear waste by a couple of orders of > magnitude?
Oh, much better. Being stabbed ten times is so much better than being stabbed 1000 times. The stuff is deadly, and stays deadly for a very, very long time. It is deadly as fuel, it is deadly as waste. Even small amounts of it are deadly. Reducing waste by a factor of X is of little comfort if you have X times as many reactors producing it. And the longer they run, the more waste they produce. And the more you have the more likelihood of failure. And that's just the waste. The potential for pollution in case of accident, attack or natural disaster is also unacceptably high - because any risk other than zero is unacceptably high. The more reactors you have the more likelihood there is of failure. Think about all the human upheavals that have happened just in our recorded history, let alone earlier. Think about terrorists, politicians, the disaffected, the exigencies of war. Think about ordinary people making mistakes. Do you honestly think that it is even remotely likely that we can keep anything safe for that long? Make no mistakes, allow no attacks, even simply remember it is there, as the centuries and the millennia march on? We can't even keep our reactors safe, or make sensible decisions on where to put them, or set up useful procedures for disaster. The Russians had no idea what to do when Chernobyl melted down. The Japanese built nuclear reactors on the coast - in a volcanically active, earthquake-prone (and thus tsunami-prone) region. Some people have suggested we fire it into the sun. Sounds good, gets it right off earth! SpaceX to the rescue? Except: Challenger...? This is a problem to which there is literally no answer except "don't do it". Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer ([email protected]) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer GPG fingerprint: 61A0 99A9 8823 3A75 871E 5D90 BADB B237 260C 9C58 Old fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170 _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
