Thorium reactors... as safe as we can ever get with this form of power generation
I agree, and converting old plants to thorium is easy, all the turbines and transformers and cable infrastructure is there, just need to build a new boiler
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Thorium reactors... as safe as we can ever get with this form of power generation
I agree, and converting old plants to thorium is easy, all the turbines and transformers and cable infrastructure is there, just need to build a new boiler
UFO Prevents Blast at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant - UFO EvidenceHere is what Mikhail Varitsky had to say: ?I and other people from my team went to the site of the blast at night. We saw a ball of fire, and it was slowly flying in the sky. I think the ball was six or eight meters in diameter. Then, we saw two rays of crimson light stretching towards the fourth unit. The object was some 300 meters from the reactor. The event lasted for about three minutes. The lights of the object went out and it flew away in the northwestern direction.¦
The UFO brought the radiation level down. The level was decreased almost four times. This probably prevented a nuclear blast.
All powerful technological marvels will eventually experience an incidence catastrophic failure. The question is not if but when, followed by cost-benefit analysis.
trainedobserver, are your questions naive or hypothetical?
Fukushima clean-up will take decades and cost billions - Channel 4 NewsThe crisis at Fukushima has had a profound effect on Japan's capacity to recover from the devastating tsunami and earthquake, not least financially.
Jesper Koll, director of equity research at JPMorgan Securities in Tokyo, said a drawn-out battle to bring the plant under control and manage the radioactivity being released would perpetuate the uncertainty and act as a further drag on the economy.
"The worst-case scenario is that this drags on not one month or two months or six months, but for two years, or indefinitely," he said. "Japan will be bypassed. That is the real nightmare scenario."
Japan's main stock index has fallen about 9 percent since the tsunami while Tepco shares have fallen almost 80 percent. The Government is considering a tax hike to pay for the damage it estimates at $300 bn in what could be the world's costliest natural disaster.
Nuclear Disaster: Who Foots the Bill? by Tyson SlocumAs the costs of dealing with contamination from the failing reactors of Fukushima continue to mount, we should re-examine not only our decision to build new nuclear power plants, but what to do about our own 104 aging reactors—and the spent radioactive fuel stored near them. Due to the liability protections that U.S. taxpayers currently provide, they represent not only a safety risk, but a financial one as well.
In 1957, before there was commercial nuclear power, Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act, which provided catastrophic risk insurance to the fledgling nuclear industry. Congress intended this taxpayer-backed insurance policy to be a temporary measure, a ten-year shelter that would give the industry the chance to mature enough to find private insurance companies to cover the cost of potential disaster.
Fast forward fifty years, and Price-Anderson is still in effect, having been renewed several times. Despite the industry's assurances that its reactors are safe, it continues to demand this unique liability protection. As a result, taxpayers cover all costs exceeding $12.6 billion associated with a catastrophic accident or attack on a nuclear power plant. As Vice-President Dick Cheney famously declared, without Price-Anderson "nobody's going to invest in nuclear power plants." That's because—as the crisis in Japan shows us—the costs and risks of operating nuclear power plants are so great that without the taxpayer financial guarantees, nuclear power corporations couldn't afford privately provided risk insurance.
Nuclear expert Arnie Gunderson weighed in on this subject and said that the following picture showed that the #4 SFP was completely exposed to the air, which means that a melt down of the rods contained in this pool definitely happened.
A reporter from the Tokyo Shimbun described the scene on the fourth floor as looking like that of a “battlefield after being bombed.”
“Pipes were severely bent,” the reporter said. “Steel frames were also twisted and rusted. It was hard for me to believe such a thick wall was blown off over a wide area.”
In Flashpoints Daily Newsmag on 05-09-12, Physicist Dr. Micio Kaku talks about the potential disaster that can happen at spent fuel pool #4. He describes how desperate and dangerous this situation is, in a completely different way from anyone else.
Bottom line, everyone who knows what is going on agrees that Spent Fuel Pool #4 is close to collapsing. Akio and Mitsuhei Murata are both warning everyone who bothers to listen, that if spent fuel pool #4 (SFP #4) falls over and spills all of it's highly radioactive spent fuel contents on the ground, it will mean the end of all human life in Japan, and quite possibly result in a life extinction event for the whole world.
Your question lacks specificity. What questions of mine are you referring to?
"How can we continue to build and operate nuclear power plants when we do not have a solution to the waste issue" would be one of many. Naive or hypothetical?
"How can we continue to build and operate nuclear power plants when we do not have a solution to the waste issue" would be one of many. Naive or hypothetical?
Although an equally powerful earthquake and tsunami were deemed unlikely in this country, the disaster was a warning that nuclear plants must do more to anticipate previously “unthinkable” disasters and plan for ways to mitigate the damage.
When it comes to nuclear power, the cost of any mistake can be truly unthinkable.
"What happened in Japan could just as easily happen here," said Sam Blakeslee, a California state senator and geophysicist who has argued that his state's two nuclear plants are more vulnerable to quakes than their operators claim.