Uranium Pebbles May Light the Way

kristy_christie writes "According to Wired News, South Africa's state-run utility giant Eskom and its international partners want to build the world's first commercial 'pebble bed' reactor, which, instead of using fuel rods, 'is packed with tennis ball-size graphite "pebbles," each containing thousands of tiny uranium dioxide particles'. To developers, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor promises a rebirth of nuclear energy. Proponents insist that the reactor's design features make it 'meltdown-proof' and 'walk-away safe'."

Comments

Re:Sweet

[vandan]

The problem with radioactive waste is that its half-life is in the tens of thousands of years.
We don't know who's going to be blowing who up even this time next year.

There is the option of shooting radioactive waste into the Sun, if it can be done economically. But the problem is that when companies such as Enron and Haliburton get in the driving seat, they dream up 'better' plans such as burying it in an active volcano. Sounds too stupid to be true? Check out this and this.

Companies will dump waste where-ever the fuck they want, the money will disappear, the company will be wound up, and 100 years later, a community will notice that their cancer rate is 50x the national average because a container has broken down and radioactive waste is seeping in the water supply. Even here in Australia, the government is falling over itself to excuse the devastation caused by uranium mining that has resulted in large areas of land to be zoned a permanent no-go area. This land, and increasingly more and more land surrounding it, is now lost for at least 50,000 years.

I can imagine a society mature enough to have nuclear reactors, with proper government control over production and waste handling. But I have to concentrate very hard, and this society doesn't look much like ours. At present we simply can't risk allowing the likes of Enron, Haliburton, Shell, Taxaco, and fucking Bush & buddies to play with nuclear energy.

Re:Sweet

[Doc Ruby]

Environmentalists: people who have to live in the environment. When you get a break, try going outside sometime - touch a tree, swim in a lake, or something human like that. Then look at some pictures of the nuclear-contaminated uranium stripmines in India and elsewhere. If you can still hear your "ideal" energy source over the din of "nightmare", then it's too late for you - something human inside you has already died. But you can still calculate the cost of storing the waste that cannot be "disposed", except in some imaginary "ideal" realm. Put that effluent in your pipe and smoke it.