Zyobot
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Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
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Post by Zyobot on Mar 16, 2020 14:22:19 GMT
'Warren G. Harding Lives Longer'.
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lordroel
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Post by lordroel on Mar 16, 2020 14:54:35 GMT
'Warren G. Harding Lives Longer'. You know i had to Google to find out he was president as i have never heard of him, maybe due him being president after Wilson and before Coolidge. |
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Zyobot
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Just a time-traveling robot stranded on Earth.
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Post by Zyobot on Mar 16, 2020 15:33:55 GMT
'Warren G. Harding Lives Longer'. You know i had to Google to find out he was president as i have never heard of him, maybe due him being president after Wilson and before Coolidge. Indeed. Like Republican Presidents throughout the 1920s, he won by substantial margins in both the popular and Electoral College votes. Whether the GOP could continue to dominate politics with him having to address the Teapot Dome scandal and his extramarital affair (rather than these emerging posthumously), I don’t know. Especially since I’m unsure how he’d address these if he lived to see them leak out. |
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Mar 17, 2020 10:44:31 GMT
Almost certainly. Whether or not there were any additional nuclear accidents due to the greater use of nuclear power.
Nuclear releases net-zero emissions and is arguably far safer than options like coal and oil, is it not? Plus, at least as I understand it, the nuclear waste can be used as yet more fuel for the power plant that produces it (though international compacts seem to prohibit this).
It has low carbon emission, only in terms of constructing and operating the plant and say mining for the fuel ores but the occasional accidents have caused alarm and with more plants there are likely to be more such cases, although probably not proportionally more given the additional experience. Although that might depend on where a lot of those additional plants are added.
Are you thinking of fast breeder reactors which can produce additional fuel, generally plutonium IIRC? The link suggests that they were largely considered when supplies and costs for producing unranoum were considered problems and that is less the case now.
In terms of nuclear waste there are a number of categories to be considered. The vast bulk is low level stuff which is irradiated material such as cladding from the reactors. Your not going to reduce that I think. Higher level waste is often a pretty complex and poisonous mixture of isotopes. By a quick skim of the article a fast breeder could reduce a lot of this so it might be a useful option. As such not sure why it hasn't been reconsidered, other than the political issues mentioned below.
I think the main reason why fast breeders were discouraged and there are agreements restricting their use, other than less need due to lower costs for uranium is that such processes often involve reprocessing that generates very high grade plutonium so its seen as a serious proliferation risk. As such its definitely something that would be discouraged for nations that didn't formally have nuclear weapons or had a shady reputation as it could lead to the rapid spread of nuclear weapons. However tensions after the fall of the Soviet empire are lower so there might be a greater interest there.
Steve
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