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Americans Favor Moratorium On New Nuclear Reactors
An anonymous reader writes "While a drop in public support for nuclear power would be expected after an incident like the Fukushima reactor crisis, the nuclear disaster in Japan has triggered a much stronger response among Americans. When Japan — the nation that President Obama held up as an example of safe nuclear power being used on a large-scale basis — is unable to effectively control its considerable downside, Americans are understandably leery about the same technology being used even more extensively in this nation. And safety concerns about the existing nuclear plants also deserve serious attention."
According to New Scientist, coal kills about 13,000 Americans per annum. In a chart in their most recent edition, coal is by far the most lethal power source per billion GWh generated.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
No it does not remain dangerous for billions of years. We had a word for things with half lives measured in billions of years: "stable". Something with such a long half-life will have very little radioactivity.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
that's just one, that i particularly like -- there's PLENTY of new reactor designs that include a 'kill switch'. there's a bunch of different ways of doing it, too, either with control rods that are suspended above the reactor and if power fails, fall automatically, or in the IFR in the case of loss of power the liquid sodium would naturally heat up, which sucks more neutrons out of the fuel rods (not exactly but near enough for nontechnical crap yeah..) -- basically, if things go wrong, the coolant being used actually becomes a big ol' control rod when it gets too hot and stops reactions, naturally without any human guidance. Oh, and the coolant system is designed so that during loss of power, the coolant (liquid sodium here) will continue to circulate and cool things down for quite a while (and hopefully long enough to avoid a shutdown, but failing that the coolant will get hot and the core reactions shut down).
Seriously, we've got 40 years since TMI was built -- we've got this shit figured out. You don't KNOW about it because "the public hates nookyoular!" and politicians shut it down. constantly. clinton killed the IFR, last I heard GE was shopping some drop-in reactors of a more advanced design than we had back in the '90s.. to the Chinese. Basically just a big ol' box that you drop into an existing coal power plant -- remove coal furnace, replace with nuclear furnace, leave existing steam turbines in place
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.