As someone from Russia I just don’t understand what America has against nuclear energy. It is the safest form of practically renewable energy. Russia understands it and is building tons of reactors and is going to be building them for lots of other countries through civil projects. Designs these days are very safe and the odds of another Chernobyl are very low. All most nonexistent.
Because the environmentalist movement is an anti-human Malthusian movement, not a pro-earth movement. Widespread use of nuclear means widespread development of humans which means more "parasites" living on Mother Earth to destroy it.
Sustainable energy does nothing more than sustain human misery in the developing world.
Thorium and breeders make for great R&D investment, but RIGHT NOW we must be building uranium burner MSRs. If we want true energy independence and displacement of fossil fuels ASAP, burner MSRs as demonstrated by Oak Ridge get us there practically overnight. Don't put the cart before the horse.
Go check out Illinois Energy Prof on YouTube. He explains why Thorium is not as attractive as it seems. He also explains the science and economics behind all energy sources.
We need to massively deregulate the nuclear energy. We need sensible laws. The government up until now has forced more expensive and deadly energy sources on us so they can get reelected. Nuclear energy is the best, supplemented with gas and oil.
I consider energy to be national security, particularly with terrorists and hostile nations meddling with production and pricing. Having a variety of sources on the grid protects against all kinds of eventualities.
Having lots of small generators makes more and smaller targets.
Mostly it's not in my back yard types. But the major change came from a film called the china syndrome. It s about a nuclear plant melting down in America. Soon After it realse 3 mile Island happened.
The 70's disaster movie fad. If if was supposed to float it sank, supposed to fly it almost crashed. Killer skyscrapers, ice age, nuclear war, ozone layer, ants, bees, sharks, earthquakes, peak oil, over-population, meteors, etc. The left realized how susceptible people are to fear and has pushed fear porn ever since.
I think that is an attribute of the American Ethos. Constantly striving to make things better, cheaper, and more efficient is a honorable goal and with our designs we can make the world a better place. We are not China stealing secrets and technology but Americans asking, if not demanding, to make things better for all people in the world. America is America because we believe in our selves and God. If there is a problem it is Americans that find solutions. It is what happens when you let free men and women think and reward results.
I'm not a fan of the pressurized water reactor designs and I think we should be moving away from those. The pebble bed reactor designs seem p. interesting but the newer versions use highly pressurized gas too, although the pressurized gas is helium so there is less chance of an explosion if something goes wrong. PWR reactors use water so there are potentially explosive reactions that can occur if water interacts with the right metal during an emergency. I do agree that thorium reactors are a pipe dream, they might make sense for small scale modular reactors though. It doesn't seem like NuScale is going that way though. NuScale being the company that got approval from the NRC for its 60 MWe last week.
MSRs are a perfectly well demonstrated concept, but thorium and breeder tech is still in research stages and putting cart before horse. Oak Ridge demonstrated that we can build tons of uranium burner molten salt reactors RIGHT NOW if we wanted.
I love how in every climate change documentary or show, they have have a quick montage of power plant smoke stacks belching out smoke with narration over it, then at the end when they say something like “CO2 emissions” they ALWAYS show the cooling towers on a nuclear power plant. Now you’ll see it every time... you’re welcome
Physically (I have a BS in Physics), the idea of a "greenhouse gas" is ridiculous.
Greenhouses don't work that way. Radiation is NOTHING compared to the effect of preventing heat transfer through convection.
Gasses don't know which way is "up" or "out". They will block incoming and outgoing rays just as much. Indeed, did you ever notice the sky is blue? That's because light is bouncing around at all sorts of crazy angles. If you're high enough up, the ground is blue(-er) too.
We know, perfectly well, what behavior CO2 and pretty much every other gas we have in the atmosphere is in thermodynamics. You can open up any book of material properties and they will tell you exactly how much heat CO2 will "trap" (really, how well it conducts heat.) It turns out that CO2 is a slightly better conductor of heat than O2 and N2.
And guess what? CO2 is a TRACE GAS. That means, you can ignore it. It doesn't do anything. You need highly sensitive equipment even to detect it in the atmosphere.
Also, looking at historical CO2 levels, as well as how plants behave, we know that 400ppm is on the borderline of "we're all going to die". We need MUCH more CO2 in the atmosphere. 2-3x, at least.
A great paper that thoroughly debunks the idea of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is written by Gehrlich. It's entitled "Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics" and published 2007 (I believe). It has been "rebutted" if you can call it that. Read the paper, read the "rebuttals", and then read the author's rebuttal of the rebuttal. Don't take anyone's word for it -- it's hard to find anyone who understands it.
I work at this site. Everyone is so excited to get this thing going.
I wish i could talk more about the design. But being in engineering has me pinned down with NDAs.
But for all the people I see concerned with the safety, comparing yesterdays nuke to the AP1000 is like comparing a 70s dodge dart to a brand new tesla.
If every powered system fails, this reactor can be brought offline safely by passive means only with no dependency on electronic systems or diesel generators.
If leftists were genuinely worried about the risks of these technologies they'd be willing to compromise with legislation requiring bigger and better contingency plans in case of a problem. Same goes for pipelines. Why aren't they EVER pushing for laws that require higher standards?
Sure they might go overboard but at the same time it's possible we could have fewer spills from stronger pipelines and make sure that if there's ever another Fukushima there's backup after backup after backup to keep everything contained. That's a compromise I would be willing to make.
If we want true energy independence and displacement of fossil fuels practically overnight, Oak Ridge demonstrated we can build tons of uranium burner molten salt reactors RIGHT NOW. Why are we waiting?
I understand a lot of MSR people want thorium and breeder tech, but ALL of that is still in the research stages, and in the meantime, uranium isotopes and the waste underneath Yucca isn't suddenly going to stop radiating. We can use that stuff right now with much safer reactors if we build lots of simple, uranium burner MSRs.
As someone from Russia I just don’t understand what America has against nuclear energy. It is the safest form of practically renewable energy. Russia understands it and is building tons of reactors and is going to be building them for lots of other countries through civil projects. Designs these days are very safe and the odds of another Chernobyl are very low. All most nonexistent.
Cui bono?
Because the environmentalist movement is an anti-human Malthusian movement, not a pro-earth movement. Widespread use of nuclear means widespread development of humans which means more "parasites" living on Mother Earth to destroy it.
Sustainable energy does nothing more than sustain human misery in the developing world.
I’d prefer to see more R&D devoted to thorium.
M O L T E N
S A L T
LFTR FTW!
Thorium and breeders make for great R&D investment, but RIGHT NOW we must be building uranium burner MSRs. If we want true energy independence and displacement of fossil fuels ASAP, burner MSRs as demonstrated by Oak Ridge get us there practically overnight. Don't put the cart before the horse.
Go check out Illinois Energy Prof on YouTube. He explains why Thorium is not as attractive as it seems. He also explains the science and economics behind all energy sources.
So maybe Bill Gates should be encouraged to spend his own money building uranium reactors?
Not if he wants to make a profit.
We need to massively deregulate the nuclear energy. We need sensible laws. The government up until now has forced more expensive and deadly energy sources on us so they can get reelected. Nuclear energy is the best, supplemented with gas and oil.
I consider energy to be national security, particularly with terrorists and hostile nations meddling with production and pricing. Having a variety of sources on the grid protects against all kinds of eventualities.
Having lots of small generators makes more and smaller targets.
Funny thing, next gen nuclear tech is small.
It’s because of The Simpsons And other propaganda.
Mostly it's not in my back yard types. But the major change came from a film called the china syndrome. It s about a nuclear plant melting down in America. Soon After it realse 3 mile Island happened.
predictive programming is such a fun rabbit hole.
The 70's disaster movie fad. If if was supposed to float it sank, supposed to fly it almost crashed. Killer skyscrapers, ice age, nuclear war, ozone layer, ants, bees, sharks, earthquakes, peak oil, over-population, meteors, etc. The left realized how susceptible people are to fear and has pushed fear porn ever since.
Still there some damn good movies that came from it.
Posiden adventure, towering inferno, Soylent Green, Omega man, Jaws.
I think that is an attribute of the American Ethos. Constantly striving to make things better, cheaper, and more efficient is a honorable goal and with our designs we can make the world a better place. We are not China stealing secrets and technology but Americans asking, if not demanding, to make things better for all people in the world. America is America because we believe in our selves and God. If there is a problem it is Americans that find solutions. It is what happens when you let free men and women think and reward results.
I'm not a fan of the pressurized water reactor designs and I think we should be moving away from those. The pebble bed reactor designs seem p. interesting but the newer versions use highly pressurized gas too, although the pressurized gas is helium so there is less chance of an explosion if something goes wrong. PWR reactors use water so there are potentially explosive reactions that can occur if water interacts with the right metal during an emergency. I do agree that thorium reactors are a pipe dream, they might make sense for small scale modular reactors though. It doesn't seem like NuScale is going that way though. NuScale being the company that got approval from the NRC for its 60 MWe last week.
Of course. Tracitional reactors can be cheap, it's just that due to excessive overregulation and environmentalists, they're way more expensive.
MSRs are a perfectly well demonstrated concept, but thorium and breeder tech is still in research stages and putting cart before horse. Oak Ridge demonstrated that we can build tons of uranium burner molten salt reactors RIGHT NOW if we wanted.
If climate change truly was an existential threat we would be building hundreds of these. Obviously its not.
No emissions. Safer than any other source of energy. Steady supply that can be adjusted to meet demand. Nuclear is the future.
I love how in every climate change documentary or show, they have have a quick montage of power plant smoke stacks belching out smoke with narration over it, then at the end when they say something like “CO2 emissions” they ALWAYS show the cooling towers on a nuclear power plant. Now you’ll see it every time... you’re welcome
Oh no! Water!
I noticed they started changing “CO2 emissions” to “Green House Gasses” because water vapor is technically a green house gas.
Physically (I have a BS in Physics), the idea of a "greenhouse gas" is ridiculous.
A great paper that thoroughly debunks the idea of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is written by Gehrlich. It's entitled "Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within the Frame of Physics" and published 2007 (I believe). It has been "rebutted" if you can call it that. Read the paper, read the "rebuttals", and then read the author's rebuttal of the rebuttal. Don't take anyone's word for it -- it's hard to find anyone who understands it.
Dude is right.
The only way to the future is nuclear.Navy subs don't run on wind or solar.Dumbasses want the 1800's again.
I work at this site. Everyone is so excited to get this thing going.
I wish i could talk more about the design. But being in engineering has me pinned down with NDAs.
But for all the people I see concerned with the safety, comparing yesterdays nuke to the AP1000 is like comparing a 70s dodge dart to a brand new tesla.
If every powered system fails, this reactor can be brought offline safely by passive means only with no dependency on electronic systems or diesel generators.
This should be top comment
Yeah. Also is it true that once completed, it will be the most powerful nuclear power plant in the United States?
No one can say for sure.
The max power of any reactor is a guess. Most run about 60% of theoretical max.
But it's definetly one of the most powerful, for a single unit.
If leftists were genuinely worried about the risks of these technologies they'd be willing to compromise with legislation requiring bigger and better contingency plans in case of a problem. Same goes for pipelines. Why aren't they EVER pushing for laws that require higher standards?
Sure they might go overboard but at the same time it's possible we could have fewer spills from stronger pipelines and make sure that if there's ever another Fukushima there's backup after backup after backup to keep everything contained. That's a compromise I would be willing to make.
We need to go all in on small nuclear. Clean, safe, cheap; incapable of meltdown.
True
We should be getting most of our electricity from nuclear power.
If we want true energy independence and displacement of fossil fuels practically overnight, Oak Ridge demonstrated we can build tons of uranium burner molten salt reactors RIGHT NOW. Why are we waiting?
I understand a lot of MSR people want thorium and breeder tech, but ALL of that is still in the research stages, and in the meantime, uranium isotopes and the waste underneath Yucca isn't suddenly going to stop radiating. We can use that stuff right now with much safer reactors if we build lots of simple, uranium burner MSRs.
This is what California needs.
Now if he brings back Thorium reactors you'll see them REALLY go mad.