TIL Nuclear power is actually better environmentally than coal.
via ift.tt
Atomophobia is a big oil plot tbh
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Newer designs are even better. For example, a molten salt reactor can be designed so that it physically can’t go into core meltdown. Because the radioactive fuel is dissolved in a molten salt compound, an overheating reactor can simply melt through a barrier, pour into a shielded chamber, and solidify back into a solid form.
The best example uses liquid fluoride salt and radioactive thorium, which is cheaper, more plentiful, and less suited to weapons than uranium.
Have ANY of you played fallout?? No thanks
What an absolute galaxy brain take
“I know this is a nuclear power plant that can’t go into meltdown, but have you not played the game about nuclear weapons destroying the world?”
afhfdssfgds the plot of fallout is that a fossil fuel shortage LED to nuclear war so this is even more of a galaxy brain take.
Has anyone of you heard about Nuclear wastes? They take centuries to degrade. Sure, USA and Russia don’t have to think about it, they can just dump them into siberia or the Nevada desert, but countries like France, UK, Germany, etc.. we have no space for nuclear waste to properly store it for the amount of centuries that it takes for it to become less harmful and who knows if the barrels that store them are not leaking? Nuclear energy is a short term solution to coal. Heck, central and east europe got hit by the nuclear disaster that was fucking chernobyl. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_radioactive_waste_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay
France already gets 80% of their electricity from nuclear power. I think they store the waste in a very deep mine, in rural Finland, far away from people.
Nuclear waste only takes a long time to degrade if it comes from uranium. It’s very inefficient, and 90% of a “spent” fuel rod is still enriched uranium.
Uranium was only used because the government wanted a “dual use” technology that could also be used for nuclear weapons. Thorium is very bad for building bombs, but it’s very efficient in reactors.
Almost all of the thorium is consumed, leaving a small amount of weakly radioactive waste which is easy to contain. It only lasts for 200-300 years.
Some thorium reactors are designed as “waste burners”, which can consume uranium waste and transmute it into weaker elements that last for centuries, not millennia.
We’re also figuring out how to turn uranium waste into electric diamond batteries. So you know, there’s that.
