Here's a fun and almost forgotten fact. In the early 1960s, the US government built a prototype nuclear reactor that was cooled with liquid metal sodium but had graphite moderators to slow the neutrons down. This reactor could start up with very low enriched uranium (as opposed to sodium cooled fast-neutron reactors which need quite high enrichments to start up) and make superheated steam at the exact same conditions as a coal plant.
Well the local utility just SW of Lincoln Nebraska needed the power one way or the other, and didn't know if the new type of reactor was going to work or not. So they decided to build an equivalent power coal plant on the other side of the turbo-generator building! The idea was that when the nuclear reactor was in an outage, the coal plant could spin the turbine. Two plants, one turbine-generator! Wild.
So anyway the nuclear plant did have a few troubles. The vendor, Atomics International, had them figured out and was planning to fix, but the utility declined it's option to purchase the plant in the end. Today, a grassy outline of a nuclear reactor can be seen right next to the still-operating coal plant down in Hallam, NE.
Honestly it was an awesome reactor concept and I want to see it brought back. I visited this site a few months ago and got a little tour. Very fun.
This is entirely off topic, but scrolling around the map you linked, it looks like massive portions of Nebraska and surrounds are gridded by roads. Is this true? I'm an Australian, never been to the US, but is that common? I can't imagine that kind of project here.
EDIT: Massive portions of the US! I find this mindblowing.
Similar to sodium cooled reactors, there are also lead or lead-bismuth cooled reactors, which have had one real life deployment ( onboard the Soviet Alfa class submarines), with its own advantages and disadvantages, and there are proposals to develop new versions.
There's so much interesting nuclear-related tech and concepts we haven't fully explored because of nuclear FUD ( much of which would be solved by the new tech).
CANDU reactors (Canadian) use non-enriched/naturally occurring uranium (0.72% u-235) by using heavy water as a moderator. Not sure why you'd use anything but them if you were starting a nuclear program from scratch.
Not quite as wild, but there was a similar thing in Sweden 50 years ago, where an oil burner was retrofitted to the cancelled nuclear power plant at Marviken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R4_nuclear_reactor . The reactor, which was more or less completed but never loaded with nuclear fuel, was used for various experiments related to reactor safety.
Sodium cooled reactors with graphite moderator have not become common for some reasons. There are some issues like sodium burns in contact with air, as does hot graphite. Potential positive coefficient (unstable) states. But the pressure in the piping could be low, compared to water/steam, so maybe cost could be low and power density high.
I think a lot of these plans to retrofit coal plants with nukes are quite overoptimistic. I'm ambivalent since they could be used as reasons to prop up coal plants longer. "See, we should invest in, and get some subsidy for a new steam turbine in our coal plant so it can be used with the graphite-sodium nuke that's going to replace the boiler in 15 years". But on the other hand, we need all potential, even unlikely solutions to replace coal burning.
Considering our very recent understanding of sodium Coulombic explosions[0], using liquid sodium for... anything requires an enormous amount of care[1].
Ordinary nuclear reactors have cooler temperatures than coal fire. So it's not straightforward to just replace that part and keep the rest like the steam turbine and generator.
One could have high temperature reactors like pebble bed, that would be a better fit but they are more exotic and experimental.
Didn't read the article because I won't subscribe to WSJ. They have been an anti climate science platform.
The UK’s Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor was designed specifically as a “drop in” replacement for coal fired boilers as it produced the same steam pressure at the outlet and so could be connected to the same turbine/generator set. Absolutely nobody wanted to buy it, I don’t think we sold a single one for export.
That one had some fundamental problems due to the choice of graphite moderator. Another selling point: the ability to refuel while the plant is running also did not pan out. In the end these reactors had somewhere around 50% capacity factor, compared to more mainstream designs that used water (light or heavy) at 90%. They are also being decommissioned early, again, due to graphite cracking over time. That said, it's not unfeasible to imagine these problems being ironed out in the end, but rollout coincided with the Thatcher Era, which deprioritized industrial developmend and fundamental R&D. It was not a good deal to buy one of these 1st gen UK reactors, compared to a GE/Westinghouse LWR/HWR.
The abounding skeptics don't seem to have any specific criticisms. Overall it seems like a good idea to reuse the heat-to-electricity machinery and grid connection of existing coal plants, since that's a good fraction of the capital required.
> reuse the heat-to-electricity machinery and grid connection of existing coal plants, since that's a good fraction of the capital required.
Compare the cost of a coal build to a nuclear build and you will see this is not the case.
Nonetheless, the transmission infrastructure is super valuable, and super expensive, as that is a huge fraction of the cost of electricity in the US, something like 40% on average. Reusing these sites for batteries is probably a good idea.
The overarching criticism is that nukes cost way more than any other power source currently under consideration. Solar and wind cost way, way less. Geothermal costs somewhat less.
If you want to repurpose your steam turbines, geothermal is a better choice. Now that we know how to bore very deep holes electrically, geothermal is practical in many more places than before.
The "good fraction of the capital required" is for the nuclear part and nuclear plants also have stratospheric operating costs, which this doesn't address. This also doesn't really address the fact that nukes require a fuckton of power to bring up that coal plants don't; nukes also require that fuckton of power when they're not generating, because reactors have to be cooled continuously, even when not "on". Or the lack of qualified labor to run the plants. Or geological stability to assure the plant, and its waste storage, are safe.
Nuclear has the highest opex of any electrical generation method; it's also estimated by some to have a greenhouse gas impact worse than natural gas. Wind costs a fraction of any other electricity generation method, solar isn't far behind, and continuing to drop around 10% a year.
This is why you see wind and solar replacing decommissioned nukes at a ratio of 6:1 (not including commercial or residential capacity) in the US and growing, and coal plants being decommissioned. There are now multiple technologies for recycling turbine blades, and solar panels are recycleable (or just resellable in the secondhand market where people don't care that they've lost 20% of their capacity.)
Storage is also plunging in cost, and additional technologies are already in commercial use (iron flow, for example.)
HVDC transmission is spreading, with higher capacity, lower cost, and higher efficiency for moving electricity greater distances (in other words, it's less of a deal if it's really windy in one spot and not in another, and ideally-suited wind sites can be further from where electricity is needed.)
Fanboys who think it's as simple as "if only we could work past the NIMBY issue" are ignoring the fact that nuclear power has not been economically viable for three quarters of a century (it has only been viable because of the military applications of nuclear power), while wind and solar keep getting more economically viable, and our grid keeps leaning more and more toward being distributed. Nobody needs the slow-reacting, base load generation nuclear provides.
Wind and solar are as distributable and scaleable as you want.
Wind and solar have significantly simpler supply chains, regulations, and maintenance/repair/inspection needs.
You don't need to worry about geological stability with wind and solar.
Wind and solar don't require tens or hundreds of megawatts of cold-start / post-operation (cooling) power.
Wind and solar have little/no security concerns nor do you need to worry about area social/political/economic stability.
Wind/solar don't generate waste that is weaponizeable.
You don't need a highly trained workforce to install, operate, repair, and decommission wind/solar.
If small nuclear reactors are so great, why isn't China building them? There's one under construction in Hainan, as an experimental project. Larger reactors are being built in quantity.
Small nuclear reactors aren't great - people are only proposing them because there's so much disdain for the normal PWRs that have been in operation successfully for decades. Reactors scale better with size: A pressure vessel's cost largely scales with surface area but its power capacity scales with volume. China is building large PWRs just fine, with nuclear output nearly quadrupling in the last decade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
because the technology transfer hasnt happened. I wish more people would be aware of this.
This is true for both India and China - two of the fastest growing energy consumers in the world and both who have steadfastedly refused to sign pollution treaties. When you pull out 2 billion people out of abject poverty, you do not have the mandate for pollution.
India has the unique position of granted an exception by the US Senate for nuclear technology transfer, but subsequent administrations have never done it (for multiple geopolitical/trade treaty reasons). There is public appetite for small reactors and power generation - especially in the fast growing smaller towns(which by definition means 3-5 million people in India).
But unless the tech transfer happens - it will take India and China about 2 decades to catch up. All the while being the most polluting nations on earth. and nothing can be done about it.
People talk about nuclear accidents like that means we have to stop nuclear energy. Contrariwise. Nuclear LESSONS! They are absolutely essential, and in fact I would hire an engineer who participated in the Chernobyl fuckup with some amount of blame for the catastrophe NO QUESTION, that man learned something with the hide on his back!
The only way to learn is the hard way. Suffering and defeat, failure. I have a high opinion of trauma because it has a biological purpose it is harmful to deny. you remember everything perfectly and vividly so you can bear witness against what happens reliably and accurately, and that sharp memory combined with reliving it over and over reveals little clues that just might solve perfect crimes. Trauma is the only form of memory that can survive a lobotomy.
how there can be any skeptics about nuclear after Germany's fantastically disastrous decision to abandon it and instead become servant to and funder of 21st century facism is beyond me.
Reusing existing infrastructure makes a lot of sense.
Some solar and wind and battery projects are sited to take advantage of disused or in some cases shared infrastructure (e.g. floating solar on hydro dams).
Data centers in old powerplants that use the infrastructure in reverse to buy electricity (and sometimes for cooling) are also a thing.
But anything that uses steam is probably not going to be competitive with renewables even with the savings this adds (particularly if you could have used the infrastructure for something else).
There are far too many counties and entities wanting to start building nuclear power plants and keep old ones running.
Present economically viable sources of uranium will last 150 - 300 years.
This article from 2009 puts the number at at least 200 years. [1]
[ ]
With the number of new reactors coming online (being constructed now),
old ones keep running, and new plant construction would cut that number
significantly.
There is a lot of be claimed from the ocean, current that is not economical.
(and I thibnk it wouldl be horrible for the ocean ecosystem to sift through such volumes).
So usually the argument is
a) That reactors will use torium so it wont be a problem.
b) We will build fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors already
has enough fuel to run for a billion years.
As far as I know (and on this I might well be), there are no big
commercial thorium or fast breeder reactors in commercial use.
If true that means
a) we cannot build them today, if we want nuclear power fast the reactors
will be tried and true LWRs
b) if we wait for research to finish up it might take a while.
So, the immediate need for power cannot reasonably be met by nuclear.
Waiting for it to replace coal and fossile fuels will not do much in the
immediate future.
Now building a nuclear plant in a democracy filled with bureaucracy is
an extremely long process anyways. Getting all the permits required for
where to build, how to build it, all the protests because nobody wants
it close to them.
When the plant is ready to start construction of a is fast breeder reactor that is economically, scientifically and environmentally viable.
It would be dumb for all the countries to start building Gen 1.
That is more of a beta best.
Get at least a decade of metrics to learn what works, what does not work,
how could it be optimized, what went wrong? Plus, scientific progress would
make Gen2 a better alternative as a template.
After all after Chernobyl and Fukushima I have heard
"Well, those were old plants and we dont build them like that anymore.
The new ones are much safer".
Then building a fast breeder or thorium should be given time to learn
from the process.
I might be totally wrong about how far along the research for fast breeders
and thorium is, and that would make most of the above pointless.
Do we have a long term solution for all the toxic waste that coal power plants are blowing into the air and the radioactive ashes that remain?
Nuclear waste seems like a tiny problem to me in comparison.
Also, people seem to be more interested in nuclear waste than in coal waste, so I expect more sophisticated solutions.
I really would like to know the solution for how to prevent nuclear meltdown induced by a hostile airstrike to the cooling system, generators, electric grid, or the reactor itself.
For the pedantic nuclearphiles, it doesn't have to be an airstrike. Domestic terrorism is a real thing as well.
You could make the same arguments about dams. A much better argument, in fact, since it's actually happened before [1]. But few are seriously considering dismantling hydroelectric facilities.
Airstrike protection is built into the regs. You just make the containment super strong. This is partly why the big new build AP1000s in Georgia are behind schedule.
An older and perhaps more beautiful solution is to put the reactors fairly deep underground, or underwater. Sadly, underground construction is extra pricey.
EDIT: I was thinking of aircraft impact here rather than hostile military attack. Defending against hostile military attack is not built into the regs.
“Let’s for sure kill the climate making earth uninhabitable by its current fauna within or not far after our lifetimes because of the small chance somebody might be a terrorist”
Haven’t looked in a while, but I’m pretty sure a Fukushima every month of our life (and onward) is much less worse than current coal consumption.
It's straightforward to prevent any ill effects from the cooling or generators or grid being hit.
Reactor buildings themselves are extremely sturdy already. And if you do serious damage to the reactor it'll probably spread out the fuel so nothing particularly bad happens before you can do cleanup.
And how much safer than coal does it have to be, anyway? Coal kills so many people.
I don’t know “the solution” but all of the scenarios you’ve mentioned have definitely been examined by the operator of the plant and by the military/homeland security department of whichever nation the plant belongs to. They are definitely aware of the danger and have corresponding contingency plans.
Physically exploding the reactor core might make a mess, but other then a very small amount of radioactive dust, the pieces, consisting of heavy uranium, would be scattered over a small area around the plant, and promptly stop reacting because there wouldn't be any neutron moderator or enough proximity for them to trigger additional fission.
Meltdowns are hard to cause, because once the reactor slags itself it also stops reacting because it's destroyed its moderator.
You're probably thinking of "what if Chernobyl?" and the issue there is that it took genuine, sustained effort to create Chernobyl, and a reactor design that could do it: Chernobyl's big problem wasn't a meltdown (3 mile island was a meltdown) it was a steam explosion beneath the reactor, and then the subsequent graphite fire which spread radioactive particulates over the surrounding area.
No practical air strike is going to create a Chernobyl equivalent explosion - there's not enough energy in explosives to do it.
Um, have you looked up what would happen if an oil refinery got hit by terrorists? The death toll would be much higher than a nuclear meltdown.
Anyway, we know how to build nuclear plants that are physically incapable of melting down. Also, foreign and domestic(1) terrorist organizations are largely funded by oil (and, since I count putin as a terrorist, gas and coal) magnates.
Rapid nuclearization (and renewable energy roll outs) cuts the funding.
(1) Fox News, etc are clearly recruitment tools for right wing domestic terrorist groups. Even if you disagree, my point on foreign terrorists still holds.
It's hard to price in the cost of the very long tail of nuclear waste. This is my greatest hesitation with nuclear power.
I'm sure someone will point to bleeding-edge tech with waste that has shorter half-life, but nuclear power as we build it now generally produces waste that is hazardous for hundreds or thousands of years, afaik.
The other objection will be: yes but what about the price of heating the planet? It's a strong point, but it's still a very hard calculation to balance.
This argument suggests that only nuclear waste has a long half-life. I suppose this is true if you require a half-life, but coal plants also produce heavy metal and ash waste that never decays.
Did you know that all the nuclear waste ever produced by the US would fit in about a dozen Olympic pools? This isn’t some massive amount of fuel we’re talking about here.
Very cute the promotion of nuclear power, while we are in the middle of a war where the nuclear infrastructure of a country is leveraged to to blackmail the entire planet [1], [2]
[+] [-] throwanem|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acidburnNSA|3 years ago|reply
Well the local utility just SW of Lincoln Nebraska needed the power one way or the other, and didn't know if the new type of reactor was going to work or not. So they decided to build an equivalent power coal plant on the other side of the turbo-generator building! The idea was that when the nuclear reactor was in an outage, the coal plant could spin the turbine. Two plants, one turbine-generator! Wild.
So anyway the nuclear plant did have a few troubles. The vendor, Atomics International, had them figured out and was planning to fix, but the utility declined it's option to purchase the plant in the end. Today, a grassy outline of a nuclear reactor can be seen right next to the still-operating coal plant down in Hallam, NE.
Honestly it was an awesome reactor concept and I want to see it brought back. I visited this site a few months ago and got a little tour. Very fun.
https://whatisnuclear.com/reactor_history.html#the-hallam-so...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Nuclear_Power_Facility
Google maps view of the outline: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hallam,+NE+68368/@40.55864...
[+] [-] vermilingua|3 years ago|reply
EDIT: Massive portions of the US! I find this mindblowing.
[+] [-] sofixa|3 years ago|reply
There's so much interesting nuclear-related tech and concepts we haven't fully explored because of nuclear FUD ( much of which would be solved by the new tech).
[+] [-] sandGorgon|3 years ago|reply
Very interestingly, this is a 1974(!!) program plan to resume development of MSR from the US ORNL MSR team
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/4227904
[+] [-] polski-g|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pinus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kickout|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gravityloss|3 years ago|reply
I think a lot of these plans to retrofit coal plants with nukes are quite overoptimistic. I'm ambivalent since they could be used as reasons to prop up coal plants longer. "See, we should invest in, and get some subsidy for a new steam turbine in our coal plant so it can be used with the graphite-sodium nuke that's going to replace the boiler in 15 years". But on the other hand, we need all potential, even unlikely solutions to replace coal burning.
[+] [-] cardy31|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptonector|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thetinguy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|3 years ago|reply
> graphite moderators
Nope.
[+] [-] jgod|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reacto...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY
Top comment: "Advantages of thorium:
Much safer than uranium-no pressure vesel, no fuel rods to melt down
Much simpler reactor-Thorium salt liquid is pumped from the reactor tank through a heat exchanger and back into the tank
Thorium is much more plentiful than uranium--in fact so plentiful it is considered a waste product from rare earth mining
Thorium doesn't need expensive enriching to make it usable
Thorium is of little use for weapons
If power goes off liquid fuel simply drains into a pit which stops reaction. No fuel rods to cool or melt down if power fails
This technology has been around for years. Why was it not developed long ago?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI
[+] [-] goda90|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Gravityloss|3 years ago|reply
One could have high temperature reactors like pebble bed, that would be a better fit but they are more exotic and experimental.
Didn't read the article because I won't subscribe to WSJ. They have been an anti climate science platform.
[+] [-] nickdothutton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iwwr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epistasis|3 years ago|reply
Compare the cost of a coal build to a nuclear build and you will see this is not the case.
Nonetheless, the transmission infrastructure is super valuable, and super expensive, as that is a huge fraction of the cost of electricity in the US, something like 40% on average. Reusing these sites for batteries is probably a good idea.
[+] [-] Retric|3 years ago|reply
Cost wise, it’s unclear how much actual savings will take place.
[+] [-] ncmncm|3 years ago|reply
If you want to repurpose your steam turbines, geothermal is a better choice. Now that we know how to bore very deep holes electrically, geothermal is practical in many more places than before.
[+] [-] KennyBlanken|3 years ago|reply
Nuclear has the highest opex of any electrical generation method; it's also estimated by some to have a greenhouse gas impact worse than natural gas. Wind costs a fraction of any other electricity generation method, solar isn't far behind, and continuing to drop around 10% a year.
This is why you see wind and solar replacing decommissioned nukes at a ratio of 6:1 (not including commercial or residential capacity) in the US and growing, and coal plants being decommissioned. There are now multiple technologies for recycling turbine blades, and solar panels are recycleable (or just resellable in the secondhand market where people don't care that they've lost 20% of their capacity.)
Storage is also plunging in cost, and additional technologies are already in commercial use (iron flow, for example.)
HVDC transmission is spreading, with higher capacity, lower cost, and higher efficiency for moving electricity greater distances (in other words, it's less of a deal if it's really windy in one spot and not in another, and ideally-suited wind sites can be further from where electricity is needed.)
Fanboys who think it's as simple as "if only we could work past the NIMBY issue" are ignoring the fact that nuclear power has not been economically viable for three quarters of a century (it has only been viable because of the military applications of nuclear power), while wind and solar keep getting more economically viable, and our grid keeps leaning more and more toward being distributed. Nobody needs the slow-reacting, base load generation nuclear provides.
Wind and solar are as distributable and scaleable as you want.
Wind and solar have significantly simpler supply chains, regulations, and maintenance/repair/inspection needs.
You don't need to worry about geological stability with wind and solar.
Wind and solar don't require tens or hundreds of megawatts of cold-start / post-operation (cooling) power.
Wind and solar have little/no security concerns nor do you need to worry about area social/political/economic stability.
Wind/solar don't generate waste that is weaponizeable.
You don't need a highly trained workforce to install, operate, repair, and decommission wind/solar.
[+] [-] Animats|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Manuel_D|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandGorgon|3 years ago|reply
India has the unique position of granted an exception by the US Senate for nuclear technology transfer, but subsequent administrations have never done it (for multiple geopolitical/trade treaty reasons). There is public appetite for small reactors and power generation - especially in the fast growing smaller towns(which by definition means 3-5 million people in India).
But unless the tech transfer happens - it will take India and China about 2 decades to catch up. All the while being the most polluting nations on earth. and nothing can be done about it.
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|3 years ago|reply
The only way to learn is the hard way. Suffering and defeat, failure. I have a high opinion of trauma because it has a biological purpose it is harmful to deny. you remember everything perfectly and vividly so you can bear witness against what happens reliably and accurately, and that sharp memory combined with reliving it over and over reveals little clues that just might solve perfect crimes. Trauma is the only form of memory that can survive a lobotomy.
[+] [-] rllearneratwork|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ZeroGravitas|3 years ago|reply
Some solar and wind and battery projects are sited to take advantage of disused or in some cases shared infrastructure (e.g. floating solar on hydro dams).
Data centers in old powerplants that use the infrastructure in reverse to buy electricity (and sometimes for cooling) are also a thing.
But anything that uses steam is probably not going to be competitive with renewables even with the savings this adds (particularly if you could have used the infrastructure for something else).
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|3 years ago|reply
Present economically viable sources of uranium will last 150 - 300 years. This article from 2009 puts the number at at least 200 years. [1] [ ] With the number of new reactors coming online (being constructed now), old ones keep running, and new plant construction would cut that number significantly.
There is a lot of be claimed from the ocean, current that is not economical. (and I thibnk it wouldl be horrible for the ocean ecosystem to sift through such volumes).
So usually the argument is
a) That reactors will use torium so it wont be a problem. b) We will build fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors already has enough fuel to run for a billion years.
As far as I know (and on this I might well be), there are no big commercial thorium or fast breeder reactors in commercial use.
If true that means
a) we cannot build them today, if we want nuclear power fast the reactors will be tried and true LWRs
b) if we wait for research to finish up it might take a while.
So, the immediate need for power cannot reasonably be met by nuclear. Waiting for it to replace coal and fossile fuels will not do much in the immediate future.
Now building a nuclear plant in a democracy filled with bureaucracy is an extremely long process anyways. Getting all the permits required for where to build, how to build it, all the protests because nobody wants it close to them.
When the plant is ready to start construction of a is fast breeder reactor that is economically, scientifically and environmentally viable. It would be dumb for all the countries to start building Gen 1. That is more of a beta best.
Get at least a decade of metrics to learn what works, what does not work, how could it be optimized, what went wrong? Plus, scientific progress would make Gen2 a better alternative as a template.
After all after Chernobyl and Fukushima I have heard "Well, those were old plants and we dont build them like that anymore. The new ones are much safer".
Then building a fast breeder or thorium should be given time to learn from the process.
I might be totally wrong about how far along the research for fast breeders and thorium is, and that would make most of the above pointless.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...
[+] [-] xyzzy21|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pabs3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avernon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ethereal-haze|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ls15|3 years ago|reply
Also, people seem to be more interested in nuclear waste than in coal waste, so I expect more sophisticated solutions.
[+] [-] jsiaajdsdaa|3 years ago|reply
For the pedantic nuclearphiles, it doesn't have to be an airstrike. Domestic terrorism is a real thing as well.
[+] [-] Manuel_D|3 years ago|reply
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise
[+] [-] acidburnNSA|3 years ago|reply
An older and perhaps more beautiful solution is to put the reactors fairly deep underground, or underwater. Sadly, underground construction is extra pricey.
EDIT: I was thinking of aircraft impact here rather than hostile military attack. Defending against hostile military attack is not built into the regs.
[+] [-] s5300|3 years ago|reply
Haven’t looked in a while, but I’m pretty sure a Fukushima every month of our life (and onward) is much less worse than current coal consumption.
[+] [-] Dylan16807|3 years ago|reply
Reactor buildings themselves are extremely sturdy already. And if you do serious damage to the reactor it'll probably spread out the fuel so nothing particularly bad happens before you can do cleanup.
And how much safer than coal does it have to be, anyway? Coal kills so many people.
[+] [-] mrosett|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BuyMyBitcoins|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AareyBaba|3 years ago|reply
Short answer, the design is such that reactor shuts down automatically with loss of cooling.
[+] [-] XorNot|3 years ago|reply
Meltdowns are hard to cause, because once the reactor slags itself it also stops reacting because it's destroyed its moderator.
You're probably thinking of "what if Chernobyl?" and the issue there is that it took genuine, sustained effort to create Chernobyl, and a reactor design that could do it: Chernobyl's big problem wasn't a meltdown (3 mile island was a meltdown) it was a steam explosion beneath the reactor, and then the subsequent graphite fire which spread radioactive particulates over the surrounding area.
No practical air strike is going to create a Chernobyl equivalent explosion - there's not enough energy in explosives to do it.
[+] [-] fennecfoxen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hedora|3 years ago|reply
Anyway, we know how to build nuclear plants that are physically incapable of melting down. Also, foreign and domestic(1) terrorist organizations are largely funded by oil (and, since I count putin as a terrorist, gas and coal) magnates.
Rapid nuclearization (and renewable energy roll outs) cuts the funding.
(1) Fox News, etc are clearly recruitment tools for right wing domestic terrorist groups. Even if you disagree, my point on foreign terrorists still holds.
[+] [-] elevaet|3 years ago|reply
I'm sure someone will point to bleeding-edge tech with waste that has shorter half-life, but nuclear power as we build it now generally produces waste that is hazardous for hundreds or thousands of years, afaik.
The other objection will be: yes but what about the price of heating the planet? It's a strong point, but it's still a very hard calculation to balance.
How do we least burden future humanity?
[+] [-] fastaguy88|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thehappypm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatever1|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61048256
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-in-chernobyl-to-suf...