/sci/ - Science & Math

http://www.asianews[dot]it/news-en/Death-toll-climbs-amid-progress-at-Fukushima-21108.html

>26 thousand deaths from Fukushima nuclear plant disaster

>>4221602

>>4221602
Are you really that dumb, or just trolling?
26,000 dead from the FUCKING TSUNAMI. There have been no confirmed deaths from radiation at Fukushima. There might be up to a few hundred cancer cases, and that's the extent of the damage.

Annual cost for fuel $10,000? Wow, if that's even remotely true, that's gonna put many companies out of business.

>>4221602
lolno

>>4221624
Probably a bit steeper at first. Thorium is something like 2-3 times more abundant than Uranium, but it's currently more expensive, I believe. However, as it doesn't need enrichment or processing, I could imagine it becoming inexpensive rather fast. Perhaps $100,000/ton if there's demand.

>>4221649
Note that the US has 2-3 years supply just lying around, going to waste.

>>4221595
1 ton of thorium will give the same amount of power output as 200tons of uranium? This sounds way too good to be true,

>>4221674
It's because conventional light water reactors only use about 1% or so of the uranium.

>>4221674
>>4221684
Also because the raw uranium has to be enriched, and 200 tons of raw uranium only equate to a few tons of enriched uranium. Of course, depleted uranium has a lot of industrial applications.

>>4221674

How much Thorium in kilograms is needed to move the average 1 ton sedan?

Nuclear powered cars man, you never need to refuel before your car just breaks apart from age.

>>4221708
Nuclear powered cars are retarded for various reasons.

>>4221710
That doesn't make them any less AWESOME.

>>4221742
How about nuclear powered electronics? How fucking cash would that be?

>>4221814
I'm not sure... I mean, betavoltaic laptop batteries would be pretty cool, but at the same time, that's a rather unfortunate spot to be receiving a dose of radiation...

B-b-but...think of it! Every time you turned a switch, you'd be harnessing the power of the THUNDER GOD!

GUYS GUYS GUYS I GOT AN IDEA!!!!!
WE GET ONE REALLY TOXIC CHEMICAL! GUYS GUYS LISTEN! RIGHT AND WE MIX IT WITH ANOTHER TOXIC CHEMICAL BUT GUYS GET THIS THE OTHER TOXIC CHEMICAL IS RADIOACTIVE!!! AND GUYS THIS MAKES IT GET REALLY HOT! GUYS GUYS AND THEN WE MAKE POWER FROM THIS GUYS! THIS WILL BE SOOOOO SAFE! GUYS!

>>4221817

Those bloody fission batteries weigh so much. Why do people pay so little caps for them?

thorium >>>> uranium

>>4221674
because they are talking raw unenriched uranium compared to purified thorium.

>>4221879
So in other words, you're think because you don't understand how it works, no one else does? If you're afraid of things you don't understand, why the hell are you posting on /sci/?

>>4221879
I have an idea. Take a rather explosive gas, mix it with a rather corrosive gas, and drink it. Fucking water, how does it work?

You guys do realise that there is a reason we don't use thorium reactors right?

>>4221921

Present it, or GTFO. Your statement as it stands only serves to stir up shit.

>>4221921
Yes. Insufficient research.

You do realise that China is researching LFTR technology right? You do realise China is the dreamed-of technocracy right?

>>4221879

Don't tell this cunt about the chlorine and sodium in his salt

We have a weapons programme that utilises weaponised isotopes as a major part of it. The reason we use uranium is that we have uses for the waste.

>>4221922
>hydrogen
>highly explosive
laughingchemists.jpg

>>4221921
Yes, that reason being that Thorium cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons, and during the cold war that was considered undesirable.

There's a reason we still use wood pulp paper rather than hemp paper. Is it a good reason? Not really.

The main reason we use uranium reactors is that you don't need to scrape the inside of a uranium reactor every damn day. There is no chemistry going on in a uranium reactor, however in a thorium reactor you got a shit ton going on with anion and complex's forming all over the place, the inside of a thorium reactor ends up acting like a zeolitic surface and accelerating the consumption of your fissionable material. While the material is still radioactive the thermal conductivity is lowered greaty due to the crystalline structures forming inside your reactor, this structure also leads to a lot of your alpha particles not reaching outside the crystal lattice.

Where as with a uranium reactor you drain the slag and periodically replace the rods.

>>4221942
Lack of reading comprehension detected.

>mfw hydrogen is so non-explosive that the Space Shuttle used it for propulsion

What about the spent fuel?

>>4221981
Hydrogen on its own is not, by definition, explosive. It's flammable. When it's mixed with oxygen, however, with a 2:1 molecular ratio, it is quite explosive. Hence its use in rocketry.

So, are there any possibilities for utilizing LFTRs in space? If they can be made lighter than conventional uranium reactors, they could be quite useful for nuclear-electric propulsion. I would love to see a Thorium-powered, hydrogen-fueled VASIMR craft.

>>4221708
>How much Thorium in kilograms is needed to move the average 1 ton sedan?

About 7 grams per million miles.

As in seven one thousandths of one kilogram.

10 grams or so would do the same for a city bus.

>>4222088
Nuclear-thermal propulsion makes more sense than nuclear-electric, since you need a way to cool the reactor anyways even if you're producing electricity and simply heating LH2 to extreme temps provides more heat transfer per unit weight than an efficient, cool set of radiators you'd need to convert that heat to electricity.

>>4222088

Conventional reactors aren't used to generate electricity in space because they produce too much heat and vacuum is a perfect insulator.

Nuclear power in space currently only comes in the form of low-power plutonium RTGs.

>>4221624
Fuel would be a minor cost. With high capital costs, financing the debt is your major yearly cost.

>>4221991

A LFTR has a 100% burn rate, leaving no spent fuel.

You're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is what about the fission byproducts?

Fortunately the answer to that is that they are continually removed through on-line reprocessing. Much of it is useful for research or medicine and can be purified and sold. The remaining waste products have short half-lives. Most of them decay down to background levels in a matter of years, and even the most long-lived products still decay in less than 300. Compare to the tens to hundreds of thousands of years for conventional uranium reactor waste.

So hang on, if Thorium is so good, how come no one is using it?

>tfw your university in one of the cloudiest cities in the US spent millions building solar panels

>>4222130

How exactly do you propose to finance and manage a complete turnover of our existing nuclear technology and displace the existing players (who will no doubt be disinclined to play along)?

As for why we didn't use this in the first place, it's a terrible approach for making atomic bombs.

>>4222111
I'm well aware that we only use RTGs currently. However, to my knowledge, there's no reason that we couldn't effectively use conventional reactors in space other than that they're big and heavy. The Russians launched quite a few satellites with nuclear reactors, and the cancelled JIMO probe would have used one to power its ion thrusters.
>>4222108
Nuclear-electric has the advantage of much higher specific impulse, and being much cleaner/safer. I was never really a fan of nuclear-thermal.

>>4221937
A use, yes, one that could potentially result in the extinction of the human race and the reduction of the Earth to a nuclear wasteland. Let's keep making nuclear weapons, guys, destroying the only planet we have is fun!

>>4222127
Doesn't having a shorter half-life mean it gives off more radiation in a shorter amount of time, making it more dangerous? Compare it to slowly decaying it over a long period of time, where it will be less harmful.

I think I might be wrong somewhere..

>>4222130
> So hang on, if Thorium is so good, how come no one is using it?

Depleted uranium tank shells and armor. Everyone also wants nukes, which you can only get with Uranium/Plutonium.
And, you know, the power companies that have held a monopoly on that shit since it was first invented.

>>4222163
>Doesn't having a shorter half-life mean it gives off more radiation in a shorter amount of time

Oh, absolutely.

>making it more dangerous?

Whether an isotope has a half life of 10 years of 10,000 years, it'll still give you radiation poisoning if you don't seal it away and stay away from it. The one with a 10-year half life will at least decay down to safe levels relatively quickly.

It's only when the half-life of an isotope reaches geological time scales that its relative "safety" has any real significance.

eg: there's natural thorium in all the stone and rock around you, but with a half-life measured in billions of years it's not dangerous to you.

>>4222163
Not really. Time is the greatest issue to face with containment. It's relatively easy to make a lead box, it's extremely difficult to keep that box from being disturbed for longer than any civilization's lifespan in history.

We could, of course, dump nuclear waste in the Marianas Trench, and let it sink into the Earth's core via tectonics, but the UN banned dumping nuclear waste at sea.

>>4222191
>dump nuclear waste and wait for fault subduction

I can't see anything possibly going wrong with burying nuclear waste where explosive volcanoes form.

>>4222189
>>4222191

I see, thank you fellow Anons.

>>4222197
Well, being under 30km of water is a pretty good safeguard. But I'm not saying it's the best idea ever.

It's just, 10,000 years is such a ridiculously long time in terms of human civilization. Recorded history doesn't date back that long. Trying to communicate even a simple message ("do not dig here, or else you will die") across thousands of years is an anthropological nightmare. This is why short-lived waste is much, much safer.

>>4222142
>>4222171

Ah okay, was just wondering as I haven't actually done a whole lot of research on the topic (Read: none).

Kinda sucks that the powers that be place weapons production at a higher priority than finding a good energy solution.

>>4222216
>Well, being under 30km of water is a pretty good safeguard.
>what are smokestacks and ocean currents?

I agree that short-lived waste is preferable, though.

>>4222216 Well, being under 30km of water is a pretty good safeguard.
Nope.

Corrosion motherfucker.

Also, are you implying that in 10,000 years human civilisation will be back to the stoneage and no one will remember what radiation is?

Some people.......

>>4222232
>in 10,000 years human civilisation will be back to the stoneage

That looks to be the most likely outcome at this point, actually.

>>4222216

Language and sign symbols don't change for no goddamn reason.

So as long as the Internet exists, the symbol for "radioactive" will remain the same, even a million years from now, because not one person would give a fuck about changing it.

Its the same thing with language. One million years from now, 1002012 English will sound exactly like 2012 English, with additional non-essential terms tacked on but no grammatical changes. Deal with it.

>>4222251
>Its the same thing with language. One million years from now, 1002012 English will sound exactly like 2012 English, with additional non-essential terms tacked on but no grammatical changes. Deal with it.

>>4222251
Grammar nazis are impopular on the internet.
Your argument is invalid.

>>4222232
>>4222251
You really need to do some reading on anthropology and linguistics. As well as history.

>>4222251
Some kind of retarded must have posted this statement... wow...

>>4222251

Hou a-leued.

>>4222268

History is history.

Modern technology allows records to be kept in perfect condition with unparalleled redundancy. The chances of losing the knowledge of basic English grammar is next to impossible, barring a complete wipe-out of human civilization.

If it is a wipe of English-speaking civilizations, then other languages will simply take over. But that doesn't disprove what I just said, since those languages would then remain the same.

The above scenario is still highly unlikely, because the world's most powerful nation is English-speaking country, the nation that will likely colonize and secure outer space and other planets first is an English-speaking country, the nation that has a secure the position of power in economics and popular culture is English-yougetwhatImean.

Languages do not change for no fucking reason. They might have changed when cultures intermingled, but that is before they could talk to their fellow countrymen thousands of miles away on an instantaneous basis. Now that we can, retaining knowledge of how to properly speak a language is required.

The word "language" does not change over time into "bimboo" for no reason, "hipster" does not change into "stehip", "are" does not arbitrarily become "eff", and "faggots" will never become "huchucks".

You will never say "bimboo stehips eff huchucks", but you are guaranteed to always be right in saying "language hipsters are faggots".

>>4222326
Languages evolve and mix. The internet itself has developed its own vernacular, hence chanspeak and such. I'm no linguist, but I know that the word "hipster" has not had a constant meaning throughout time. And these are just short timescales... Look at how much English has evolved in the last thousand years. Processes like that do not arbitrarily stop just because of technology.

And who's to say the internet will still exist in a hundred years, let alone ten thousand?

>>4222326

Ge alæwede pāl feormynd.

>>4222279
>Middle English: You're an idiot.

>>4222368
>Old English: You ignorant pole-polisher.
>pole-polisher

>>4222365

Formal language does not change for no reason.

We're never going to see scientific papers published in chanspeak as the norm, don't be fucking stupid.

Why would we suddenly abandon global communication?

>>4222365

Language has not evolved in the way that you imply.

Internet lingo only supplants an existing meaning with a new or combination word of its own. It does not change the very structure of the language itself. Some words and terms you might see on 4chan, for example, might have strange exceptions to their grammatical use, but they otherwise are only being "plugged in" to the normal English language.

People might actually say "lol" in real life, but that doesn't change the grammatical structure of the language, and it certainly doesn't replace natural laughter. If you encountered something like that a thousand years from now, you could still ask the person in normal English what the term meant, and everything would work out just fine.

People are being tested on their knowledge of English every day. Children are required to reach a certain level of fluency through their formal education, which restrengthens the knowledge of the language at every generation. This didn't happen in the past because there wasn't any such globally-synchronized, near-mandatory educational system back then, but we do now. Heck, there's a thing called spellcheck. Unless you are gutter trash, if you don't know proper English, you will have to use it on a professional level whether you like it or not.

Exceptions are for those nurtured under shitty affirmative action principles, of course.

and thus mankind moved it's quest to control co2 build up in the atmosphere to the quest to control h2o build up in the atmosphere

>>4222368
This might be my favorite post ever.

>2012
>wanting it in your back yard

Fag

>>4222326
>>4222400
I think you have a point, to an extent; the English language will probably not change drastically within the next few hundred years. However, there will always be informal dialects.

What it seems you're failing to grasp is the timescales involved; again, ten thousand years is longer than recorded history. No culture has stayed intact nearly that long. And with the accelerating rate of advancement/looming collapse of society, or what have you, it's impossible to predict what life will be like in the year 12000.

>>4221674
This.

>>4222475
As explained before, it's because raw uranium is mostly U238, so 200 tons of raw uranium only produces a few tons of enriched uranium.

Have anyone seen the documentary Into Eternity?

Its about Onkari or something like that, means hiding place in finnish. DIG IT DOWN about 5 kilometers underground, no quakes or vulcanoes around, just solid rock.

Still, if someone comes there in 40 000 years and have no idea what it is they may be pretty curious like all humans are. No idea of the language of todays civilization how do we tell them NOT to go down?

Very very interesting stuff and a special movie all in all, I stronly like the idea of making markers that resemle death and undcomfortableness on the surface.
How do we communicate with people in a very distant future?

>>4221921
is it because it could virtually phase out the need for oil companies? of course not! It must be the OUTRAGEOUS COST OF IMPLEMENTING THEM

>>4221974

you guys seem to have missed this. I mean shit are where do you dump all the scrapings? Can they be reintroduced.

Also on the radioactive waste thing. You are assuming our agencies in charge of protecting us from nuclear waste aren't constantly updating their files on locations of radioactive waste, and that in 100 years time when we transfer to some rediculous locational system that we won't translate the locations over, and that this kind of thing won't continue indefinitely through translating historians or those responsible for the maintained protection of the knowledge.

>peopling thinking that the tons of fuel used is particularly relevant to nuclear power

>>4221595
>supporting nuclear power
>2012

>>4223295
What's your reasoning for not supporting it?

>>4222251
>Its the same thing with language. One million years from now, 1002012 English will sound exactly like 2012 English, with additional non-essential terms tacked on but no grammatical changes. Deal with it.

Have you ever taken a look at a King James Bible? It's 400 years old. Now imagine how much a language would change over just a thousand years. They're going to be incredibly different.

>>4223295

>Shit tier trolling
>2012

>>4221649
>>4221617

1 ton of thorium in lftr will produce 1 billion $ worth of energy.

>>4224374
> implying ltfr reactors are real
reported for science fiction