/sci/ - Science & Math

progress is the price of democracy

Nukes have a payback time of 15 years
Politicians serve only for 4 years and wanted to get reelected
Thus, they go for Natural Gas and Coal that has a payback time of just 2-5 years.

Despite the fact that nuclear is so much cheaper, safer, and cleaner in the long run
Not to mention the fear mongering
Nuclear has been badly tainted and politicians, informed or not, wanted to look like a man of the people instead of an actual leader with a long term plan

Just watch Economics of Nuclear Energy by Wendover

>>11783773
>starts making nuclear plant again
>Gas industry shills tell the ambientalisr
ts to attack it "Chernobyl!", "unsafe!"
>If you are using Uranium, you may as well be making Nuclear Nukes according to USA or Israel.
>Gas Industry Shill start talking about climate change and Renovable Energy
>They boicot you from getting oil goods
>???
>[TAXED]

>>11783814
This provides an explanation why building nuclear power is not incetivized, but it does not explain why nuclear power plants can't be properly built when it is actually attempted.

We haven't lost the ability. We have gained the wisdom. Nuclear power clashes with human nature, and the politics of corruption.

Sure it is hypothetically possible to build a safe nuclear reactor - just like perfect Communism is possible if everyone would just act like Karl Marx says they should. But in both cases, the systems will actually reward people who cut corners and siphon resources out of the system. Safety margins will quietly get thinner and thinner until something explodes. They the authorities will blame one guy, and learn nothing in the long term.

You are just never going to have a safe nuclear power plant because nothing that depends on humans doing what they are supposed to can ever be stable. Greed and short sightedness are parts of human nature.

Capitalism has failure built into the system. Bad companies are supposed to go out of business so that better ones can replace them. Companies can be replaced. A collapsed windmill or burnt coal plant can be rebuilt. But the 1000 square miles around Chernobyl will be radioactive forever.

>>11783842
Shut the fuck up, /pol/

>>11783773
Ecologists, not enough private, corruption and no real need to improve

EPR is the French SLS

>>11783842
>You are just never going to have a safe nuclear power
>something, something politics and human error

These statements were reasonable 20 years or so ago. We now have the technology to build nuclear reactors that can not self-sustain a reaction, meaning that a catastrophic failure becomes physically impossible - unless by an extremely strong exterior force (airplane crash, large-scale terror attack, meteor etc) that breaks the reactor apart and ejects the actual radioactive material over a large area.

There's still a debate to be had about the radioactive waste, but the reactor safety issue has been solved, people just aren't aware of it.

>>11783859
>Ecologists
I assume that the majority of ecologists believe anthropogenic climate change to be a major threat to society and ecosystems.
How do they reconcile their opposition of nuclear energy with their demand for CO2 reduction? Do they just give into the delusion that renewables will fill the gap when even western nations with tremendous effort weren't able to crack the 50% renewables margin after decades? Do they not realize that even in optimistic scenarios the increase in global power consumption eats up all the additional renewables added to the mix, meaning that oil, gas and coal will remain level or grow well into the second half of the century?

>>11783906
>Do they just give into the delusion that renewables will fill the gap when even western nations with tremendous effort weren't able to crack the 50% renewables margin after decades?
Yep

>Do they not realize that even in optimistic scenarios the increase in global power consumption eats up all the additional renewables added to the mix, meaning that oil, gas and coal will remain level or grow well into the second half of the century?

Nope

Asking them to think is simply dumb, we have the lowest environmental impact in western Europe and still they think we should abolish nuclear RIGHT NOW because muh Chernobyl

>>11783853
>Shut the fuck up, /pol/
Japan had already experienced three earthquakes stronger then the one that took out Fukushima. Why were they unprepared? What did they say to people that warned them?

>>11783875
>These statements were reasonable 20 years or so ago
Fukushima was fool proof, if you ask the fools. And it wasn't 20 years ago. If they knew it was dangerous, why was it still in use? If they didn't know, that proves my point.

>>11784012
Fukushima injured 4 and killed 1
Coal plants kill 800k people a year

It was the first REAL nuclear disaster in 70 years and it was only made possible by the 4'th most powerful Earthquake in Japanese history

>>11784012
>Fukushima was fool proof
Fukushima was highly sophisticated but it had a classic reactor with a sustained nuclear reaction occuring in the fuel rods - once you take the water containment ayway or the back-up power that moves the water, you're in trouble. However, we can now build reactors with non-self-sustaining reactions, meaning the instant you take away power they just go out.

Think of it this way: old reactors operated like burning logs in an oven - if you remove a brick from the oven wall, the logs just keep burning and the heat gets out. Latest generation reactors operate like lightbulbs - the moment you take way the external power the wire stops glowing and no more heat is produced.

I understand your concerns, but you underestimate just how far the technology has come in terms of safety. Keep in mind, we're also talking about "hypothetical safety" here, Nuclear Energy is the safest form of energy production by any statistical measure, by a wide margin and including the Fukushima and Chernobyl incidents.

As I said, there are plenty of arguments to be made against Nuclear, you just happen to be using some that aren't supported by facts.

>>11784072
The only logical arguments against nuclear are just concerns over economics and politics

It is expensive as hell with a large payback time
The process of creating nuclear energy can also be weaponized. The nuclear waste also pose massive risk as it is more than ripe for terror cells to turn into a dirty bomb. Both of which raises great internation concern of a country without good political and governmental stability wanted to become a nuclear power

That's all the argument I could think of
Anything else I missed?

>>11783773
DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD/SCARY/STRESSFUL IT IS TO DEAL WITH ENERGETIC GLOWING ROCKS THAT CAN POISON YOU AND EXPLODE BECAUSE YOU FORGET TO FUCKING W A T E R THEM CORRECTLY?!?!

>>11784104
Are you being sarcastic here, man?
Uranium ores are completely safe
It is not when you enriched them.
Nuclear plants uses 20% enriched uranium and bombs uses 90%

Huge difference between the two and one can argue that uranium rods are so much safer and stable than gasoline and natural gas

>>11784104
Then water them correctly.

>>11784184
But I don't want to water the rocks...

>>11784196
THEN AUTOMATE THE PROCESS

>>11784104
See >>11784072

Because people know things go wrong in engineering. There is 1000s of examples from history from Chernobyl to the titanic. There are also 1000s of examples from every single one of these events of people saying it wont go wrong or that nothing can go wrong or that its safe.

Nuclear powerplants just happen to also have the potential to severly punish an area/people when they do go wrong.

The logical thing is just to not use them unless you want to build up your nuclear weapons arsenal in which the goal outweighs the risks.

>>11784251

once you start looking at nuclear powerplants as countries just building up there nuclear bombs arsenal they suddenly make more sense about who builds them and when.

I’m as pro nuclear as it gets but why even bother making these threads. Pro nuclear people will never convince anti nuclear people and vice versa by calling each other retards on a Mongolian basket weaving enthusiast image board.

>>11783842
then why were they ever built in the west and yet are still relatively safe? capitalism and human nature didn't change in the past 50 years. the worst nuclear disaster occurred in a communist state.

>>11783842
See
>>11784072

>>11783842
But for some reason the US Navy can have teenagers, that recruiters pick up of the street, operate reactors with a flawless was safety record.

>>11784265
to enjoy the debate, faggot

>>11784012
Japan has not had an earthquake near the 9.0 of the Tohoku Earthquake.

western countries haven't it's that nobody wants them in the first place

>>11784271

you mean on a submarine?
that wont effect everyday voters if it blows up, and also is part of the countries nuclear defence system so can justify having higher risks.
Totally diff situation to dropping a nuclear power plant in the middle of your voters.

>>11784251
As opposed to natural gas or coal,plants that just constantly spew poison to the population while working properly

>>11784072
Fukushima would e been fine had they just kept pumping water with the firetruck or made sure the diesel generators were flood resistant.

The meltdown happened because tepco complacency. The seawall was sufficient, but not for the tsunami caused by 9.0 quake. The generators had no additional protection because they figure the seawall was sufficient. They pumped in water according to the book. Though it all went into the hear exchanges instead of the core. Because they never simulated or tested for it under loss of pressure. There also wasn't a gauge to indicate water level in the core.

>>11783830
If you don't do something you lose the ability
Our plant (finland) is massively over budget because it's mired in red tape, green protests and is mostly just a platform for the comply to train their indian engineers for the actual projects in india.

>>11784297

The sun does this anyway with its radiation. It kills you so slowly or at such a low rate it doesnt effect voting. Hell corona has a kill rate of approx 1% and people can barely make themselves care about it so the .0001% death rate from pollution isnt gonna do much to votes.

>>11784300

this post is such a strong argument why nobody should be building nucler power plants, which side are you trying to argue here?

>>11784092
It’s only expensive because government is footing the bill and endless bureaucracy to deal with

>>11784271
Being a us navy nuke requires the highest academics, two years of intense schooling with a high dropout rate, and several years of ojt to become qualified and competent. Nukes also have a higher than average suicide rate. Navy reactors are labor intensive because Rickover thought automation was less safe. The Macy pays six figure reenlistment bonuses to retain nukes. Because of how difficult and expensive training new ones are. Though nukes still decide to leave, because of the stress.

>>11783773
>Why have western countires lost the ability to build nuclear powerplants?

We haven't. We're building them right now and we're working the next generation of mass produced small modular reactors as well.

Please stop getting your information about nuclear power from the solar and wind cultists.

>>11784317
Pro.

Fukushima was an older plant at the end of its life. New designs don't have its flaws.

>>11784323
>Being a us navy nuke requires the highest academics

Bro, don’t bullshit me. Navy Nukes are peak midwit and get a watered down crash course in nuclear engineering (not physics) that lacks any and all mathematical rigor.

>>11784092
Nuclear waste is a legitimate environmental risk factor, agreed.
I think the potential of nuclear materials for the purpose of terror attacks is vastly overestimated as it is incredibly hard to attain, handle, transport and deploy as well as arguably less deadly than a well co-ordinated conventional bombing or chemical weapons attack.
Weapons-grade plutonium is not a natural byproduct of the processes employed in the production of electricity for civilian purposes - therefore it should be viewed as an independent ploitical issue unless in the context of civilian plants as a strategy of concealment of military ends which however was never shown to be successfull (Iran, North Korea)

I would add that there are some intermediary risks concerning nuclear plants in unstable or potentially unstable regions. We haven't had a war in Erurope in over half a century but one might occur eventually. Old reactor generations are very safe if managed properly, but who will guarantee oversight during an armed conflict. Just one or two old reactors in France blowing up could trigger a chain-reaction and make Europe permanently uninhabitable - but if we get another 30 years of peace we can faze out all self-sustaining reaction plants with ease, so the danger is miniscule.

>>11784336

im sure they said the same thing about fukishima when it was built too. Have you looked over the plans for these new plants and checked for flaws?

Anybody in this thread who is aruging that nuclear power plants are good who has not looked over the plans for these new power plants being built is a fraud

>>11784368
Please be more precise on what is your concern. Cost? Safety? Economical viability? What have you learned from "the plans" (proposals?)?

>>11784297
your average person has never heard of a natural gas disaster or a coal bomb. meanwhile nuclear has things like chernobyl and hiroshima attached to it because of the name. If you could remove the word nuclear from the name in a way that media can't just say "XXXXX is just a nuclear reactor" and be correct then it can be popularized with everday joe.

>>11784378

safety, how can you claim those powerplants wont meltdown if you havnt even looked at the plans, what are you basing this on? this is how the problems occur in the first place, everyone just parroting something they heard someone else say without checking themselves.

>>11784401

it reminds me of /biz with everybody buying random crypto coins and claiming they will moon without reading the white paper or researching the coin, they just buy becasue they saw somebody shill it and parrot whatever the other person said. (like mcafee or some other hack like that saying the coin will moon)

>>11784030
>Fukushima injured 4 and killed 1
nah, a bunch of US sailors have leukemia and other cancers from showering in contaminated water after their ships were stationed at Fukushima to aid the clean up.

you're right about coal though

>>11784401
Because you physically design them to not be able to melt down

>>11783773
Because we now care about our environment, and radioactive shit isn't very environmental friendly
Also nobody really needs much weapon grade plutonium right now and without that the plants are too expensive

>>11784424
citation needed

>>11784356
Nigga, most countries with nuclear power plants have nuclear warheads.
If it escalated to an all-out world war 3, nuclear reactors would be the last thing to worry about.

Assuming there is someone left alive to worry about it.

>>11783853
/pol/ would support nuclear energy you fucking moron, you're thinking of plebbit.
>>11784012
Fukushima was still using the old method of just tossing spent rods into water. We have better methods. You know what hasn't failed? Nuclear submarines. They do mostly fine and are still in operation.

The death toll from nuclear power plants is insanely low for what is like 6 decades of time? Being scared of them is amazing once you realize just how little people have died.

>>11785036
I was on a nuclear power thread just a week ago.
/pol/ was there saying nonesense that it's retarded to think that there can be a power source better than oil and coal and that we should all just die once the fuel runs out

We just mocked him on the side as we discussed fusion reaction as a future of nuclear. Though he was there.

Could be multiple posters, idk. Don't care much. I just know that /pol/ has no single opinion - just fuckin stupid who just wanted to argue and call people jews and niggers

>>11785060
Oh right, I forget that 4/pol/ is basically a bunch of schizos screeching while a few autists calmly plan something stupid. I go to a different /pol/.

>>11785065
Don't go to /pol/

>>11783773
Politics

Oh and nearly all firms that design and build nuclear reactors are western companies.

>>11784882
actually nuclear is the most environmentally friendly energy we currently have access to

>>11783830
Knowledge not maintained and transmitted is lost over generations.
Besides the best and brightest were in physics and engineering during the post-war era, today they go in finance making algos and do 50 times the salary of a physicist.

>>11783773
investing in wind and solar is just much smarter, renewable projects are finished in 2-3 years and earn back money, getting permissions and building nuclear can take decades, now even the few remaining projects are stopped because there is not much need for new plants in an shrinking economy

>>11784401
Human knowledge is built on parroting, did you spend 20 years looking at cells before saying "yep this histology book is true"?

>>11785164
>extremely dependent on climates,
>clears massive amount of ecosystem,
>destroys migratory animals,
>has to be set up so far and remotely away that the energy gets literally soaked up by the resistance of the miles after miles of cable till it only 40% of the energy arrives on the houses.

lul
Tell us more.
Tell us more of how they could be better sources than nuclear that can power entire cities at just a 500m^2 of land and uses fuels that can easily be harvested on Earth and even abundant in asteroids

>>11784385
>your average person has never heard of a natural gas disaster or a coal bomb
Are you serious?
The entire industrial era was THIIIIIICK with coal ash.
So goes for almost every single nation that still uses it, developed or not

No one mentions it because "100 deaths a day is no biggie, it happens everyday. Heart attack kills more than coal"

Then came nuclear and everyone began fear mongering it like zombies and orcs are about to rise.

People taking popsci so seriously is both hilarious and sad

>>11785194
you no this not true, but it really does not matter for an investor, money just goes where you can profit, fast
it's really not hard to understand

it's actually even worse for nuclear, old plants are retiring now

>>11785232
Solar Panels have a payback time of 6-8 years. Double considering evening and climate issues

Nuclear is the ONLY viable long-term energy source for space travel.

End of story

>>11785237
this makes me think of the definition of renewable, and why nuclear isn't on it, given that all renewable sources come from the sun (which is a nuclear reactor) or geothermal (which is largely also due to nuclear reactions)

>>11785240
actually it's 6-8 month in a sunny region, but even your number would be much better then nuclear because these projects tend to be cancelled and all your money is lost

>>11785247
>geothermal
>nuclear
Wait, hold on
What?

Earth's core is not fueled by anything. The crust just cooled down and every core of planets are bound to cool too. Mar probably cooled down.

Either way, Geo and Hydro are amazing sources and actually better than nuclear in short term. Shame they are so land-specific

>>11785247
the sun is fusion not (nuclear) fission, that's a difference

>>11785251
Dumbass.
And no.
Juuuuuust you wait.
Nuclear is Inevitable for survival - both fission and fusion

>>11785260
there is a difference between putting panels on your roof in Alaska and utility scale in Arizona

>>11785254
it is from residual heat and from nuclear decay - kinda like giant RTG
but it it's 90%-10% or 50%-50% is just geologists guessing
nobody has any idea how much uranium is 100+km below surface or Earth, let alone in Mars

>>11785272
That measured the full capacity of a solar panel, dumbass.
An intalation of a 1kW solar panel can cost $11,000.
Depending on how much your county charges for utility electricity, you are going to take 6-8 years before it could pay for itself.

Stop advocating for Solar for it is a meme
We should really just call it "Nuclear Energy Malnourished version"

Nuclear Energy is the ONLY way to leave this planet and go spacefaring.
Get fucked

>>11785307
Doesn't matter.
DIgging the Earth is costly as fuck and damaging to the environment

Just grab an asteroid and mine it.
Asteroids have been hampered down by eons of colisions to guarantee that there is no loose dirt on it. Just dense minerals and metals.

Though. I can advocate for digging the Earth to make your own Geothermal plant at your own backyard to cook some barbeque or whatever

In the UK at least it's because they have to do 9487377272 environmental studies and safety studies and then fight off 398437374 civil lawsuits by green groups, paying literally billions to consultants and lawyers.

>>11784401
I see. I never claimed that the nuclear powerplants which are currently under construction in the US and Europe are latest generation, non-self-sustaining reactors (they're most probably still the safest nuclear plants ever constructed, but that's beside the point), I'd have to look into that. I'm merely pointing out that this much safer technology exists and disregarding it based on false assumptions relating to previous systems is unreasonable.

>>11783853
>Wind
Why so many deaths?

>>11785316
uuh, asteroids are just loose piles of rocks and sand

>>11785309
even for rooftop residential it can be much better, depending on state

>>11785734
think about it. lots of exposed fast moving parts, tall and difficult to service.

>>11783814
>Nuclear is safer

What are tail events retard?

Impossible to estimate correctly the safety of nuclear power plants when when particularly bad event can ruin an entire region of the planet

>>11785826
>ruin an entire region of the planet
Surroundings of Tchernobyl are charming, nature took its terrain back, fauna strives like never before, green everywhere.

>>11785837
>Let's just ignore the cancer statistics

>>11785842
Nuclear has caused less cancer than solar

>>11785850
so you can go back to living in chenobyl as long as you don't use solar? That's some prime real estate waiting to be settled.

>>11785863
You sure like to move the goal posts huh, most of the area is pretty much safe yes and it's the worst it gets with nuclear. You wouldn't want to live in a lithium mine for a battery system for a solar cell either.

>>11785309
Aggreed! We should be experimenting with reactors in SPACE, NIMBY.
Anyway, my main issue with Nuclear is that it is highly centralized and regulated, meaning that a small group of people can shut it down if they feel like it (politicians, terrorists, whatever). Solar panels or a wind generator may not be the cheapest, but they will keep the lights on, regardless of what anyone other than me wants

>>11785255
but fusion reactors aren't called renewable either

>>11785254
it's a mixture, residual heat from the formation of the earth and its contraction, and heat from radioactive substances underground

i mean, we mine uranium from the earth, you don't think it's already heating up stuff down there before we touch it for some reason? of course it does

The proponents of alt-energy in the US are greenfags and limp wristed libs who are automatically allergic to any "nuclear talk." They are not practical people, the practical people are still on the natural gas side. Nuclear has no fanbase here, even though it should, it's our way forward as a people. It should be all-in on finding a way to capture fusion instead we bicker over fucking windmills and coal.

>>11785738
Huh?
I heard the opposite after NASA literally crashed a satelite on it and nothing happened

>>11785894
>reactors in SPACE
Yes, that is correct.

To travel through the stars, you must have a ship powered by a star

>>11786417
Nuclear is not renewable but there is so much it might as well be

Fission uses uranium that is everywhere
Fusion uses Hydrogen that is THE #1 most abundant resource in the Universe

Solar is only renewable until the sun dies
Wind is only renewable until the Earth's temperature equalizes in a frozen state

>>11785260
>8 years
Not that guy but anything you can put in your house that has a payback time less than half the duration of an average mortgage is hypothetically a great investment. It just so happens that people in the US who actually get to own houses have only another 10-15 years to live and can't be bothered.

>>11787216
I was just making a point that Solar's payback time is not low. Especially when you consider your climate.

>>11783842
and this is different from any other industrial powerplant or factory how? Those still kill more people and do more long lasting damage to the environment per kwh every year than all the nuclear accidents put together

>>11783773
There is not really a demand for such power plants right now, maybe in the future.

>>11784424
>US sailors have leukemia and other cancers from showering in contaminated water
did you get that from an issue of the National Enquirer or something?

>>11785316
you can just collect uranium from seawater. It costs twice as much as a mine, but the catch is that the cost of fuel is almost irrelevant to the final electricity cost of power delivered via nuclear reactor.

>>11787378
Won't that be damaging as hell?
I dread to wonder how big the facility should be just to filter enough water to earn the minerals like gold and uranium on it.
Not to mention the trash and micro plastics

>>11785251
Nuclear is cheap, safe, clean, and can provide much greater outputs and energy independence than any other type of power plant.

>>11783773
They haven't lost the ability, per se, they've lost the funding and public support for building new nuclear reactors. In many countries, the construction of new nuclear power plants has been banned outright due to the public concern. The reason so many of the projects grind to a halt or go over-budget is because of the constant cuts to funding, or the outright defunding of projects entirely.

>>11785826
>muh worst-case scenario
Meanwhile, the best case scenario of fossil-fuels is reducing the inhabitable portion of the entire fucking planet by 20% within the next century. We put so many carcinogens into the air just burning fossil fuels that the entire argument of
>muh cancer rates
Seems laughable in comparison. Forget the fact that climate change is already killing literally millions of people a year.

The worst-case scenario for a nuclear plant is arguably a better situation than what we are already doing with fossil fuels.

>>11784012
>fukushima was fool proof
They literally knew for 40 years their tidal wall wasn't tall enough and did absolutely nothing about it to save face. It was, by every possible definition, not remotely close to "fool proof". Fools literally caused the melt down by doing nothing but sticking their heads in the sand.

Because democracy enables retarded majority's emotional instability and lack of any real knowledge to ruin all kinds of progress

>>11787484
Democracy seemed to be working fine in the 1970s when most nuclear reactors were built. Better than the Soviet system which brought us Chernobyl.

The problem is the decline of education. Democracy is the best form of government but it needs a strong education system to function properly.

>>11787489
>Better than the Soviet system which brought us Chernobyl.
No
It was worse back then and it is still worse
Europe only a few decades back managed to reproduce a copy of soviet uranium refining tech, and america still didnt reproduce even that and is now fully reliant on EU's areva and gas diffusion aka tech from the 30ies

Still, if not for democracy these problems could be powered through, with democracy its a crippling blow with no recovery possible

>>11787520
This is a very strange take considering the Soviet Union lost the Cold War due to being behind the West on nearly every single metric of technology and innovation.

Today when you look at Asia, as well, the most innovative and advanced countries are all democracies while China is only relevant due to its large population and its industrial espionage, whereas South Korea and Japan are developed, First World countries which are consistently innovating and developing technology on their own without having to rely on stealing it from the West.

>>11787355
There should be a huge demand given that man-made global warming is considered a truism in Western countries. How can most people advocate for CO2 reduction with such conviction yet refuse to educate themselves about the technologies to accomplish this goal? They just scream "build more solar panels" but have no clue how they work or what their limitations are. It's absolutely astounding to me that France is the only Western Nation to deviate from the path of pretending to use renewables when fossil fuel consumption hasn't gone down a single drop of oil in 30+ years.

>>11787548
>Soviet Union lost the Cold War due to being behind the West on nearly every single metric of technology and innovation.
This is wrong, there wasnt any big technological difference between the sides of cold war, some individual fields were either more or less advanced on both sides
Nuclear field happened to be more advanced in USSR, which is why europe switched to order of magnitude more efficient centrifuges in 80ies, aka soviet technology from 50ies, while america still uses gas diffusion for strategic stuff and buys european for everything else

On the china-japan-korea argument, first, south korea was a dictatorship for quite some time, and singapore is a dictatorship still for that matter, yet it doesnt seem to hamper them
And second, china keeps doing nuclear stuff while both of the other two do not, and presence or lack of democracy being the only major difference between them only further proves my point about democracy hindering the progress

>>11785260
>additiional incentives
Lol

bump

>>11783773
America has built 20+ in the last 30 years alone. They're called Aircraft Carriers.

>>11785873
>most of the area is pretty much safe
how long has it been?

>>11787484
You only want progress because your emotions are telling you you do

>>11789242
And 20+ nuclear submarines

>>11783814
>Despite the fact that nuclear is so much cheaper
Is it cheaper though? I saw a graph of the price per megawatt of power of different energy sources and nuclear was up there. Cheapest was solar or wind.

If you expose asphault to a sufficient amount of beta radiation (neutrons), it will become permanently radioactive; The problem with radiation is that it can spread and make other things that weren't radioactive before, radioactive for a long, long time.

You need to design a reactor that doesn't produce permanent waste products that are lethal to handle by hand; The original reactors we had were actually designed to produce fuels for nuclear bombs as a byproduct which is the reason they run the way they do; hot and inefficient.

There are several nuclear technologies with potential but as with any paper design, it can take a long time for people to come to trust it.

>>11789330

>>11787658
No, the Soviet Union was notoriously behind on every field of science except nuclear and perhaps aeronautics. This is well-known.

http://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/intersect/article/download/691/659/&ved=2ahUKEwjYsfyto_zpAhUdHLkGHQxRBMQQFjAMegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw2jIC1W_okuRoV7ogyRyKxD
>Despite its lead in heavy
industries, the Soviet Union was 20 years behind the U.S. in the domain of
computing by the late 1980s. In 1986, the U.S. had about 1.3 million mainframes and minicomputers, and the Soviets had only 10,000 (Longworth, 1986). The aggregate peak performance of Soviet machines in 1991 was over two orders of magnitude less in computer power than the supercomputers designed by Cray Research in the U.S. (Wolcott, 1993). By the 1980s, the technological gap between the Soviet Union and the West had become impossible to overlook. It soon became clear that the real prize of the 21st century information age was not pig iron and steel, but silicon. In focusing all their energy on meeting industrial targets, the Soviets missed the revolution in information technology that had taken shape in the world during the mid-1970s.
Success in industrialization did not bring about success in informationalization. Whereas industrialization relied on heavy physical inputs, informationalization was a new mode of development in which the
main sources of productivity came from optimizing use of factors of production on the basis of knowledge and information (Bellows, 1993).

https://fee.org/articles/soviet-communism-was-dependent-on-western-technology/
>Dr. Sutton examined 75 major technological processes in such crucial and diverse sectors as mining, oil, chemicals, machine building, aircraft, communications, agricultural equipment, etc. and estimated the percentage that originated in Russia. The startling results were: between 1917 and 1930, 0 percent; between 1930 and 1945, only 10 percent; and between 1945 and 1965, a mere 11 percent.

>>11787658
>>11789403
By the 1980s the technological gap had reached the military and was affecting the ability to maintain parity vis a vis the West.

http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/the_war_that_never_was.htm
>Evidently Ogarkov' s concept of PGMs as the nukes of the future had taken hold, and it is probable within GSFG and the Warsaw Pact such realization was already well entrenched. Lacking the means to counter Western military technology, and with a military system that underemphasized initiative in combat, the Soviets saw nuclear weapons and the re-adoption of a preemptive strike as a viable alternative. The Soviets also declared GSFG a failure through obsolescence. The poor performance of Soviet doctrine and equipment against Western client states in the Middle East, as well as the Soviet Union's own abysmal 10 year experience in the Afghan War, a GSFG victory in Europe was problematic at best and doubtful after 1983. Quantity had associated costs as well, and in the end those costs proved fatal.

>>11789367
Pretty depressing desu. Nuclear power was supposed to provide almost limitless energy at very little cost. Instead it's 50% more expensive than fucking coal.

>>11789330
>>11789691
>>11789367
Stop posting this
This chart counted the price of energy with the payback time.

1mw Nuclear Power plants spends only $64M for fuel
Natural Gas spends over $450M for the same amount of power

Shortly after Nuclear Power have fulfilled its payback time, it overtakes the profit made by both Natural Gas and Coal in just 5 more years.

>>11790311
How is that relevant though? If the initial investment required for a nuclear power plant is ridiculously high then that should be reflected in the price per kilowatt hour.

The coming years it seems we will see if fusion is going to happen or not.
Fingers crossed

>>11790365
It does but after 15 years (6 years spent on construction) revenue takes over completely

For the same amount of power, every year, natural gas makes only around $20M
Nuclear is at $150M because the fuel expenses and operation cost is just sooooo cheap.

Do not be misled
Uranium pellets are incomparably cheaper than coal and fuel.

>>11790490
They are constructing the experimentation lab and expected to finish by 2025
We won't know if it was successful until 2035

Shit is hard.
Fusion is 100x more powerful than fission and near impossible to control in a self-sustaining manner.

>>11790490
Also, fusion already happened
Hydrogen bomb is fusion

Looks like we have lots of imbecilles whining about nuclear energy.

One of you should explain why we should not be using the safest known form of energy (least deaths per Wh) that also has the least CO2 emissions and can also be the cheapest (when properly leveraging economies of scale and while consider external costs).

>>11790528
That's not what I mean. Having a fusion reactor that isn't producing more power then it consums is useless

>>11790508
2024 from what I read.
Plus there's quite a few others, including private, constructing experimental reactors.
But once they start the experiment in 2024, we will know if it's going to be viable soon after.
We won't see it used for anything other then experimenting for at least a decade imo.

Greens.

>>11787484
There is a way to fix it.
Like many countries US included - decided to put 60% of government income, aside for social stuff, pensions in some countries etc.

So energy sector, particularly Nuclear - should be controlled not by politicians but by technocrats, that are selected purely on academic merit, job experience in nuclear fields, military - nuclear etc.
25-75 member councils, that build nuclear w/e they please, using w/e tech they want, using public money of course, listening solely to technical opinion pieces.

>>11787489
Democracy is the best farm, reason and wisdom considered even when people are dumb or selfish, the secret is to have proper institutions and decentralization.