Controlled thermonuclear fusion is always just 5 years away.
I made exactly that comment prior to the video link and deleted it. That 30 to 40 years in the future figure was stated in the video and I've heard that forever.And has been for 30 or 40 years.
I made exactly that comment prior to the video link and deleted it. That 30 to 40 years in the future figure was stated in the video and I've heard that forever.
Meanwhile, an absolute pittance is being spent in this country on R&D for 4th generation fission reactors which "burn" 97% of their nuclear fuel thereby leaving vastly less waste behind and requiring vastly less nuclear fuel, reactors which could burn up the waste already left behind by our dangerous ANTIQUE 2nd gen reactors which burn less than 1% of their fuel thereby leaving vast amounts of highly radioactive waste behind.
But, never fear, the CHINESE are spending billions on that...
I've never quite understood the apparent disconnects in the environmentalist line of thinking. Hydrocarbons are bad. But replacing coal power plants with nuclear plants is bad. So we should close the coal plants with no generating capacity to replace them with. Nuclear waste is bad. So we shouldn't allow the development of next generation nuclear plants that produce far less waste and, by the way, we can't allow the certification of the one safe place we spent billion$$ to store nuclear waste. And so all of our waste continues to lay around in temporary storage facilities that weren't designed to hold it long-term and, which are now storing more than they were designed to store, even temporarily.
What about that idea of using many smaller reactors deep underground? I can't remember the young lad who thought of it but I believe the biggest plus was that it would greatly reduce the chance of meltdown as well as limit the damage in case there was one.
Until we finally figure out fusion, we need to leverage fission in an increasingly safer and more efficient way.
I made exactly that comment prior to the video link and deleted it. That 30 to 40 years in the future figure was stated in the video and I've heard that forever.
Meanwhile, an absolute pittance is being spent in this country on R&D for 4th generation fission reactors which "burn" 97% of their nuclear fuel thereby leaving vastly less waste behind and requiring vastly less nuclear fuel, reactors which could burn up the waste already left behind by our dangerous ANTIQUE 2nd gen reactors which burn less than 1% of their fuel thereby leaving vast amounts of highly radioactive waste behind.
But, never fear, the CHINESE are spending billions on that...
AMAZINGLY, the rather leftish, environmentalist PBS produced THIS which points out that the current reactors we're using are antiquated crapolla and that safe and cheap nuclear (fission) power IS easily possible:
[video=youtube;eDCEjWNGv6Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDCEjWNGv6Y[/video]
Thanks for that! Haven't seen that one.A really fantastic documentary on this topic is called "Pandora's Promise", available on Netflix for sure. Really altered my perspective on nuclear power and the ability of renewables to fill in the fossil fuel gap.
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