/sci/ - Science & Math

"Environmentalist" lobbies are staunchly opposed to nuclear power. No nuclear power plant has been built since the 70s. If we had 400 nuclear power plants we would power the entire united states and have plenty left over to fuel every single car. Both the problems of climate change and middle eastern politicking would be nearly solved.

Instead we burn mountains of coal and oil and funnel billions of dollars to violent savages in the desert. Way to go environmentalists.

greenfags...

Well to begin with nuclear energy is not cheap. It destroys the land the elements are taken from for a 1000 years and Australia is the biggest provider in the world.

Also nuclear waste. Please don't suggest we make a million dollar rocket and multi-million dollar spaceship just to crash into the sun with the waste.

>>2186695
You clearly have no idea why it was opposed.

>It destroys the land the elements are taken from for a 1000 years

>>2186705
Anon ain't lying. The mining process is dangerous as hell and uses a ton of water that gets pumped back out indiscriminately with most of the radioactive elements left in that weren't desired in the end result. That water stays shitty for a loooong time and shits up everything it touches.

>>2186705
Deathwing?

waste hugging faggots

>>2186714
Can I bathe in the water? I wanna grow a 3rd arm.

>>2186718
10,000 years

Use liquid fluoride thorium reactor
Tree faggots can't complain
Everybody wins

>>2186696
>Also nuclear waste
do you have any idea how many tonnes of nuclear waste are produced now? and how many would be produced if we used nuclear energy exclusively? what are our capacities for storage of nuclear waste? and how much of waste can be reprocessed into fuel?
no, you don't. so shut the fuck up.

>>2186754
>mfw he entirely ignores the enviromental impacts of using fissile materials at all.

>>2186765
>mfw he entirely ignores the environmental (and economic) impacts of continuing to use oil
>mfw i have no face

>>2186704
I know environmentalist groups in Western-Europe are historically guided by KGB. Old connections still exist so it was a great win for Russia when Germans started to close down their reactors from 2000.

Germany is now very heavily dependent on Russian gas and therefore Russia has great influence on Germany.

>>2186686

The fuel used in naval reactors is weapons-grade uranium. But I'm sure there's no problem spreading that shit all over the place, rite?

As another anon mentioned, thorium reactors are the way to go. We'll most likely be seeing more of them in the future.

>>2186770
So you suggest we use yet another problematic fuel source rather then the options we do already use to generate energy that are without many environmental impact?

Surely you must be raging or trolling.

Nuclear engineer here. This thread is making me very sad.

>>2186754
^^You in particular are a retard.

>>2186798
could you elaborate?

>>2186783
Can you explain how thorium reactors work, or link me to a place that explains? I am willing to be educated.

>>2186798

It's pronounced nuk-u-lar.

Nuk-u-lar.

>>2186783
>weapons-grade uranium
No. It is HEU (>90 wt. % U-235)

>>2186820

Have a look at this
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1

>>2186826

That's a negative, broseph. Note that I specified naval reactors; the USN's use at least 93% U-235. See page 87 of this paper:

http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/81mahip.pdf

>>2186853
Broseph, you need >96 wt. % U-235 for a bomb.

They actually worked on a nuclear bomber back in the 50's. It was eventually dropped. I think the idea of a flying nuclear reactor makes people understandably nervous.

>>2186896
There was/is a lot of crazy shit on paper. It's disingenuous to proclaim it was ever going to be reality.

>>2186883

I really wish that were true. The Little Boy bomb for example used uranium that had been enriched to just 80%, and these days 90% is considered the standard threshold for weapons-grade. A relevant paper on uranium enrichment re: South Africa's program in the 80s:
http://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/sgs/pdf/4_2cochran.pdf

>>2186920
Because those bombs didn't use additional neutron sources? Derp. Straight U-235 gun-type is going to need greater than 96%.

>>2186906
There was actually a flying prototype. In fact there's a theory that what happened in Roswell, NM is that it had to dump its reactor, as the prototype flight path went right over Roswell right around that time.

>>2186830
Well I read all that, thanks for the link. I am sad that thorium reactors aren't standard yet tho.

>>2186906


it wasn't on paper.

the USAF actually built one. and it flew, until one of the fighter jets filming it flew into it and blew it up lololo

>>2186927

So you use an implosion-type device.

All the sources I've seen appear to indicate that a pure-uranium gun-type should work at 80-90%, but I fully admit to being out of my depth scientifically here.

>>2186920

You know making a U-235 reaching critical has way more factors than just adding an explosive to it ? Right ?

Those reactors go on military vessels, they all have fail safes and are guaranteed that they aren't going critical.

Having a reactor meltdown, ok it is possible but very unlikely, having a reactor go critical, no can do.

>Why aren't we putting nuclear reactors on everything?

The Nimitz carriers are virtually indestructible, while putting nuclear reactors on planes, cars, houses etc would be ridiculously unsafe due to terrorist and environmentalist bullshit.

>Why aren't we putting nuclear reactors on everything?
>nuclear reactors on everything

I've seen something like this somewhere...

>>2186754
>do you have any idea how many tonnes of nuclear waste are produced now?

Yes.

>and how many would be produced if we used nuclear energy exclusively?

Yes.

>what are our capacities for storage of nuclear waste?

Completely insufficient if we continue using enriched uranium fueled plants, but we don't have to do that at all.

>and how much of waste can be reprocessed into fuel

Nearly all of it can be reused in breeder reactors, and reused again and again until reduced to a few products that decay to background in decades rather than hundreds of thousands of years.

Better yet we should be using thorium cycle reactors that do this from the get-go from the most plentiful nuclear fuel on the planet.

>>2186993
>critical

Stop talking ignorant shit. You don't know what the terms sub-critical, critical or supercritical even mean. Critical mass is required to sustain a reaction. A sub-critical reactor is a non-functional reactor.

>How does this work?

Nuclear fission

>Why aren't we putting nuclear reactors on everything?

Nuclear fuel and reactors are unacceptably dangerous if mishandled or badly designed.

From what I understand, nuclear reactors work by heating up water and using that to spin a turbine that generates electricity.
So even though there is infinite waters in boats, there isn't in cars and smaller things.

>>2187148
cars use water for engine cooling. yet they don't have infinite water supply. what now?

it's too big, you need a large room for the reactor and often that's not how cars/planes work.

a nuclear powered high speed train though, may be eventually feasible, but it's also moot since you can just use electricity for high speed train anyway.

>>2187424
why, do, you, have, so, m,a,n,y, commas,? Don't you, know it, o,n,ly makes, you look, like a fucking, illit,era,te retard?

>>2187441
i was going for, pretentious douche

hai guise, i got a great idea for nuclear powered cars.
what if we liek, instead of putting nuke reactor in every car, made one xbox hueg reactor, put batteries in cars, and used power from that reactor to recharge them? cool idea or not?

>>2186896
The fact that it was radioactive isn't what killed the project. They found that after installing enough shielding to keep the crew alive and equipment functioning there wasn't enough room left to put any bombs in.

>>2187474

I approve of this solution.

While Muslims still exist, it isn't safe to use nuclear power more widely.

If we were to exterminate the entire Muslim world, the benefits of nuclear power could be more completely exploited.

>>2188014
youre american, right?

>>2188048

Please evaluate the validity of my statement without bringing nationality into it, as if being from a particular country automatically invalidate's someone's views.

>>2188048

Please evaluate the validity of my statement without bringing nationality into it, as if being from a particular country automatically invalidates someone's views.

>>2187475
Actually, today, if attempted, its generally regarded that we could infact make a viable nuclear plane.

The bigger of the two reasons the projects never reached success was because ICBMs are much easier than nuclear planes. The shielding was actually a legitimate concern during the lifespan of these projects tho.

tldr: ICBMs > Nuclear planes

>>2188014
Ironically enough, exterminating the muslim world would be very easy if nuclear power was used.

>>2186686
To answer the OPs question which none of you seem to have bothered to do; Nuclear power is quite expensive to build into a naval vessel, there were three nuclear powered heavy cruisers in the fifties but the weight of the reactor restricted their armour and weapons.

However, we have gotten better at building nuclear reactors and can build larger ships, so here are the numbers to make nuclear powered warships a reality:
-If the price per barrel of oil goes above 130 dollars per barrel it is more cost effective to make all cruisers nuclear.
-If the price of oil goes above 175 dollars per barrel it is more cost effective to build nuclear powered destroyers.

These are old statistic before the fed ruined the dollar.

>>2188078
haha oh wow. but telling that every muslim is a terrorist, while every christian is peaceful gerntleman, cool story bro.

>>2187474

We can do all sorts of exciting shit if we ignore for a second how dreadfully inefficient batteries are.

We'd probably run the entire grid on Hydro.

The capacities of storing the nuclear waste in one years worth is dwarfed by the amount of garbage people throw away in one day.

Nuclear waste is put into under ground Salt mines, where the salt is just a soft rock and it caves in ontop of the nuclear waste until it decays all the way to a stable isotope. Granted, it takes a long time though.

>>2186754
There are more advanced nuclear plants in development that can use nuclear waste from other plants as their fissile material.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

>>2188221
yeah except for the fact that you'd fuck everyone on the damn planet

>>2188078
yet you imply that being of certain beliefs invalidates a person's right to live

>>2188475
I'm going to need more than a pretty animation before I buy into that concept. Things that seem too good to be true usually are.

>>2188359
>MOTHERFUCKING BATMOBILE!

>>2188212

I would think the amount of anti-aircraft technology would make it unfeasible, ie, giant nuke in the sky waiting to explode.

Assuming you can make it missile-proof, there's really no reason on making a giant flying aircraft; conventional bombers would be just as efficient.

>>2188313

I couldn't help but notice that the post in question made no mention of Christianity at all.

>>2188602

Look up breeder reactors. They're already in widespread use.
Actually pretty much only the US doesn't, which is amusingly backwater.

Even Canada uses them, so if you need any you could just buy them from your neighbor.

>>2188801
What was being proposed is not the same as a conventional breeder reactor. In a conventional breeder, the enriched core is surrounded by a blanket of depleted uranium. Fissile is bred in the blanket, but does not significantly contribute to power production. After a fuel cycle the blanket is removed then processed to produce fuel.

The only option.


Well, ok, solar, if we can improve mass-production and reduce the need for toxic materials

>>2188801
Actually breeder reactors aren't in widespread use. The vast majority of reactors are conventional light water reactors. Other configurations are relatively rare.

BECAUSE CHERNOBYL AND THREE-MILE LOL WE ALL KNOW NOOKLEAR REACOTRS ARE EVIL

ITT: A lot of people who don't know a thing about nuclear power, but irrationally fear it anyways.

OP, you have your answer.