/sci/ - Science & Math

>>5631605
oh! those guys!
they didn't realize the water was beta-ray active and just wore rubber boots with tight seals. beta went straight through the boots and gave them some not-small radiation burns on their ankles

they got IMMEDIATELY rushed to the hospital, were fed extremely healthy meals and tended to every minute of the next two days.
they probably had a rough night, some pukin' i bet
but after two days they were fit as a fiddle and walked out the front door having been cleared.
of course they were not allowed back on site to continue cleanup (they still wanted to help, but the rest of the team was like "holy shit you did your part, YOU'RE COOL"

>>5631586
you know that's -actually- not that bad. 2 or 3 Sv is scary on paper. spread over short bursts over a year or so? not that bad.
i'd be much more worried if he got some of that shit in his system (he most likely did not, the suits they use are very well made). radio-toxicity is much worse than just open air exposure

>>5631585
oh, didn't realize westinghouse had that much authority, they make some good reactors. i'm slightly less worried now

>>5631579
i'm actually quite excited for solar power being a commercial-scale thing you integrate into your roof shingles, and it cuts your power bill in half. a SUBSIDIARY system, not primary.

nuclear energy would be used as grid baseload and for the crazy industrial manufacturing and processing shit

>>5631565
>From what I understand, China is using canned (and by that I mean pre-approved, more or less modular, US) pressurized water reactor designs and modifying them for higher thermal output (which is not that dangerous), including the AP1000 and CPR-1000. Pretty straight forward stuff and nowhere NEAR RBMK design flaws.
i'm still really nervous! most of the reason US reactors are so rock solid is because the NRC is a very very restrictive agency. maybe too restrictive but that's another issue
China doesn't really have a nuclear oversight of any kind. and if they do, they're probably paid off. it's fucking bad over there

>>5631554
>It was scheduled to be permanent closed less than a month after the earthquake anyways.
the following tuesday, actually.
fate is a fickle bitch

>>5631542
>by-products are extremely toxic thus not clean
true, but it's all kept in a nice bottle. coal plants have to dump it out a chimney

>if one process in a long list of procedures goes awry....
the system shuts itself down without fuss. the entire design is built around shutting everything down if anything is amiss.

>it takes billions to start a plant and once operational costs hundreds of thousands to keep running annually
not too big of an issue if you make millions in profit annually from the electricity produced. it still takes about 15 years (i think) to pay down the plant. good thing they usually run for like, 60+

>This is all even worse when you consider they are completely vulnerable to natural disasters.
every single one of the nuclear reactors in japan (including fukushima) went into immediate cold shutdown and "brace mode" once the earthquake was detected. the only think which crippled fukushima was a one-in-5000-year tsunami, and generators in basements without any kind of water proofing. a big oversight.
it was also built IN FUCKING '71

>>5631523
hello...you?

by the way LFTRs are not the be-all end-all you might think they are. it's a damn good solution but there are some kinks

>hastelloy-N is basically the only known material that can survive a traditional lftr configuration (heat, fluorine reactivity, intense neutron flux). it's a fucking nightmare to work with, but not impossible.

>the design hinges upon online refueling and reprocessing, which isn't trivial. it's more of a chemical plant than a nuclear plant, and requires mostly materials research

>the core is the perfect neutron breeding environment for weapon material. tons of neutron flux, all nicely moderated. you could make some plutonium without much fuss by simply reconfiguring the core. it'd be difficult to conceal though

>>5631536
india works with solid thorium fuel. i don't really consider it a valid use but it's a decent stepping stone from boiling water reactor to lftr. I'm terrified of chinese built boiling water reactors, they're in an even worse situation than an RMBK like chernobyl.

>>5631540
which is nice

>>5631465
actually it was a total meltdown (fuel rods completely melted inside primary containment. froze as soon as it hit the steel pot), and aside from the immediate site the surrounding area's totally fine, no real signs of ecological damage either aside from some butterflies. the plant did exactly what it was supposed to do in this situation

>>5631376
>It seems that the only reason we are not pursuing implementation of the technology is because of ignorance in the government and fear of nuclear power in the public
well, uh....

either way china will beat us to the punch at this rate, and we'll be buying their reactors, which they built using research from oakridge national labs. Research which we abandoned in the late 50s because liquid metal fast breeders just looked so good. To date i don't think a single liquid metal fast breeder reactor is in continuous operation. anywhere. oops.

the "failure condition" is a fucking huge spectrum from "nothing happens" to "worse than chernobyl"
being humans, we assume the worst of all things while ignoring actual statistics. so naturally we assume the worst of nuclear power unless we're properly educated on the subject.

also there's a bit of confirmation bias. never hear about the <lots> of NPPs around the world humming along just fine for DECADES, just the one which fails. same reason people are fearful of flying. the opposite is why people are NOT fearful of driving.

so the key is education

neutron star above the chandraskar limit. done

>>5623506
oh shit, that huge motherfucker is only a hundred megawatts?
you could stick a three core nuclear facility in the same area, including the exclusion zone, and produce like 2.5 gigawatts electrical easily.

>>5623302
ha, amusing

also nice find OP. i also find it amusing that a french company is building it, they'll probably make it so damn well it'll last for 60 years or more.
them frenchies know how to nuke it

>>5620231
use a fixed high power neutron beam to initiate fission in a target, instead of generating a high neutron flux environment with neutron moderation.

upside is it's an off-on system. the entire reaction ceases almost immediately after turning the neutron source off. very safe.

downside is it's incredibly complicated and fiddly. getting good efficient returns on energy investment sounds like a nightmare. also there is no beam source in existence that can produce the needed number of neutrons per unit time.

here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_295893&feature=iv&index=1&list=PLED25F943F8D6081C&src_vid=Wp20Sc8qPeo&v=hW7DW9NIO9M

>>5606584
meant to say orbital velocity, which as another guy said is about 7 km per second

please understand, just because you're very high up doesn't mean acceleration due to gravity has dropped from 32 feet per second per second, at least not any noticeable amount.

you STILL need to reach escape velocity. the entire point of aircraft assisted launches is so that you don't waste as much fuel "swimming" through the thick lower atmosphere, and can instead skim straight through the wispy upper atmosphere.
but you still need to reach orbital velocity.
a big model rocket won't get you very far.

>>5601140
well it's a pretty damn unprecedented event, even if it doesn't hit. what do you expect?

that comet that might hit mars?
yeah
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21573086-next-october-it-collides-mars-maybe-have-you-heard-its-stars
it might make an area "the size of wales" moderately temperate for up to a millennium. doubtless it will vaporize basically all the water on the surface and maybe even the subsurface. liquid water could be stable on mars for some time just from atmospheric and geological heating

how soon can we seed the shit out of mars with oxygen producing thermophiles? gotta get them in during the "hot period" right after impact but before the ice age caused by reduced solar radiance

also the odds are at 700 to 1 right now, which would be unacceptably high if this was heading for earth

sorta
it's not the second coming
it will probably never fit in your basement, or be affordable enough to
but it's nice, quite safe, and the fuel's cheaper than dirt

make an almost completely autonomous fixed wing UAV that carries a banner for advertising or something
it flies along a set path of GPS coordinates, lands autonomously when the battery is low (so you can hot swap it out) and can take off autonomously just from you throwing it

also stick an FPV camera on there for extra cool

this will take you most of the summer and be about $500 in total if you DIY everything (like, don't buy those fat shark fpv goggles, make your own

EXTRA bonus points for a ground station that has a tracking radar antenna for ultra long range flights

>>5589948
bingo, short lifespans and high reproductive yields. couple of them born without legs doesn't matter.
we live long enough that cancer is a real thread, and we have a 9 month gestation period for usually one offspring

>>5589192
well of course they aren't, i'm just wondering if any movies got it right, perhaps unintentionally