A tribute to the best and greatest thread in the world: Off Topic

[Psychosplodge]

And they've been on older, less well designed systems. Apparently ours "fail safe".
and if you stick them in places like the far north west, anglesy, down near landsend, basicly out the way, we should be alriteish...

[Cap'nSmurfs]

There's been more than is strictly comfortable, to be fair. Chernobyl is still the worst, although the jury's still out on the long-term effects of the Fukushima event. One of the more worrying tendencies is the ability and desire on the part of the nuclear industry to convince you that nothing bad ever happens. Check out the official line on Three Mile Island, and then do a bit of digging into some of the independent research done on the long-term effects.

Nuclear is very low carbon, which is a huge plus, but it does mean you have to take care of the spent material after its been used. You have to keep that **** safe and secured for about 100,000 years. We're not very good at building things which last ten, so far. Which is not to say it can't be done; it's just that it's more difficult than the nuclear lobby wants you to think.

On "fail safe" new designs, you may want to check out the problems EdF has been having getting its next-gen reactors up and running. There've been several design flaws discovered and the projects are quite far over time and over budget in some cases as a result.

Also, you may have missed the story, but it was reported a couple of weeks ago that the age of cheap uranium is about to come to a close. The price of nuclear is about to go up by quite a lot, if current projections hold.

All of which said, I would much rather have medium-term nuclear - so long as it's used to transition us to sustainable energy production, which is both safe and feasible at the moment, if the political will exists to do it - than shale gas fracking in any capacity. That stuff is awful.

[DrLove42]

There are three major issues that spring to mind

Fukishima in Japan - The result of a gorram 7.0 Earthquake. Still no meltdown, just irradiated area.

Three Mile Island in the States. Blocked valve because of a computer issue in a 1970's system caused a partial meltdown, and release of some radiation. No cancer cases linked to this discovered yet

And the big one - Chernobyl, Ukraine. The result of a mechanical failure in a 1970 Soviet building. Total meltdown, large uninhabitable area.

With modern engineering and computers they're one of the safest forms of power, barring extreme hand of god accidents.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Chernobyl was not only mechanical but also user error. They ran a test when they shouldn't have.

Actually, it's worth finding and reading the report by the Chernobyl investigator. It's like a classic horror story.

[Psychosplodge]

Literally they are designed now to shut down if any element fails, hence fail safe..

I read somewhere that most of the incidents that occurred at windscale were related to nuclear weapons development in some form or other.
I only need to worry about storage for the next fifty or so, the previous generation ****ed us over financially, so why should we bother about the next?

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Right, but what a "design flaw" means is that they may be "designed" to shut down, but if the design is flawed...

The problems specifically were with the integrity of the shielding.

[Bitrider]

Glad to see you are happier! Cheers!

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23501423"]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23501423[/URL]

[Kirsten]

just been to see The World's End, instantly one of my all times favourite films, everyone must go see it.

also I love this song

[Wolfshade]

Nuclear power is safer than most sources, as for waste, well it is easier to store several tonnes of radioactive material than megatonnes of ash produced yearly.

As for spent fuel, use them to heat swimming pools: [url]http://what-if.xkcd.com/29/[/url]

Or reprocess them, or convert the energy to biomass using radiotropric fungus ([url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus[/url]), of course my favourite would be to jettison it to another solar body, like Venus, it is not suitable for mining due to the sulphuric rain, or the sun. Though with these off-world solutions the energy required to escape earth might make it inefficient.

[khambatta]

Watched a documentary about this [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository"]storage facility in Finland[/URL]. Seems that after 100,000 years of human & cultural evolution, no-one will understand what "Keep Out!!!" means, so the builders are having trouble with the signage.