China has built a Thorium molten salt reactor

[4K8KW10]

We're run as a partial democracy based on elections. So politicians very strongly prioritise at most a few years ahead - until the next election. They've avoided nuclear power because it costs them votes from the (very numerous) OMG NUCLEAR MEANS EVERYTHING WILL DIE! people. And they won't bet on something that might work in the future rather than something that does work in the present. Headlines about them "wasting" public money on something that doesn't work will cost them votes and something that might work half a dozen elections later is useless in getting them votes.

They're not idiots. Well, some of them are. But most of them aren't. They're just working the system as it is. Partial democracy has its advantages, but it also has its drawbacks.

Such scientific topics should not be decided by the populist crowd that has neither knowledge on the matter nor the willingness to understand and accept the seriousness of the situation.
Especially the global warming, and the pollution, and the sustainability.

This is what we need only professional expertise to deal with.


The thing that is wrong with these so called "idiotos" is that that don't know what is right.
The key for our future survival and well-being in a sustained world is to do the things right. And only right.

The students must learn the Science of being Right, Ethics and Good Laws for sustainable development only.

 

[Efour]

Good. China to rule the world by 2050.

 

[4K8KW10]

Good. China to rule the world by 2050.

We will be doomed if that happens. The Chinese system is even worse than the Western and it's rotten from inside.

Hope that it won't happen.

 

[Efour]

We will be doomed if that happens. The Chinese system is even worse than the Western and it's rotten from inside.

Hope that it won't happen.

Trust me, I speak with lothing, but one way or another China will be the superpower that we all look to by then.

I'm not sure what lunatic I was listening to but he outlined a plan for Taiwan/Korea/Japan that China could easily/catastrophically follow.

If the annex Taiwan they gain control of most of the infrastructure the west relies on for computer technology then at that point it'll just be Australia as a Western power to intervene because the USA is currently lead by the weakest bunch of fools for a while.

So slip into a Chinese dominant future smiling or with the death of millions. Our kids will ultimately choose I guess.

 

[bm_999]

Oh GODDDDDDDDDDDDD nuclearrrrrr

 

[Ayahuasca]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-58911210

 

[BUDFORCE]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-58911210

Good if they can get those things going.

We need it to be honest, they want to push no burning of fossil fuels to save the enviroment I am all for it, at teh same time I dont want to be living in a mud hut.

IT'll also stop us being so reliant on oil and gas which we need to do sooner rather than later.

 

[PlacidCasual]

Irrespective of carbon dieting we need to move beyond fossil fuels because they are limited resource. I acknowledge that our technical ability to extract less and less accessible sources will increase but there will come a point where no more of nature's bounty is left. So two different reasons align for the same goal and our concerns over pollution and climate change makes that need now. We just need to get on with it and in the UK avoid our historic failing of building innumerable unique plants instead of standardised designs.

 

[Angilion]

Such scientific topics should not be decided by the populist crowd that has neither knowledge on the matter nor the willingness to understand and accept the seriousness of the situation.
Especially the global warming, and the pollution, and the sustainability.

This is what we need only professional expertise to deal with.


The thing that is wrong with these so called "idiotos" is that that don't know what is right.
The key for our future survival and well-being in a sustained world is to do the things right. And only right.

The students must learn the Science of being Right, Ethics and Good Laws for sustainable development only.

But that's only possible without any kind of democracy. Personally, I'm in agreement with Winston Churchill:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time [..]

Winston Churchill, 11/11/1947

A benevolent and highly competent dictatorship or oligarchy is a better system, but benevolent and highly competent dictators and oligarchs are in rather short supply in the real world. As you say yourself:

[..] The Chinese system is even worse than the Western and it's rotten from inside. [..]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-58911210

That's great news, but it's just a shortlist of potential sites for something that doesn't exist yet. Good to see the UK government is funding the research in a serious way, though. £400M isn't pocket change.

Irrespective of carbon dieting we need to move beyond fossil fuels because they are limited resource. I acknowledge that our technical ability to extract less and less accessible sources will increase but there will come a point where no more of nature's bounty is left. So two different reasons align for the same goal and our concerns over pollution and climate change makes that need now. We just need to get on with it and in the UK avoid our historic failing of building innumerable unique plants instead of standardised designs.

I'm reminded of the situation in the mid 19th century regarding the transmission of infectious diseases. The two main sides disagreed, sometimes very bitterly, on the cause of contagious diseases. Was it miasma, the long established explanation, or this newfangled idea about germs? But they agreed on the solution - hygiene. Most importantly, sewerage. The same solution would work for either cause, so they agreed to work together lobbying for it. The same's true here, both for the reasons you give and for the reason that we have to deal with climate change. As with cholera et alia in 19th century Britain, the cause isn't the main thing. The solution is. It doesn't matter to what extent the change is driven by natural processes and to what extent it's anthropogenic. We have to deal with the results, whatever the cause is. We have the power to affect the climate. Whether we're doing it to balance natural changes or to balance anthropogenic changes is irrelevant to the fact that we have to keep it balanced. Like how building sewer systems would fix the problem of cholera et alia regardless of whether the cause was miasma or germs.

 

[Washout]

Almost need a separate branch of ... I dunno, the civil service, somewhat like the judiciary, for looking after long term infrastructure projects that go far beyond the terms of short sighted political parties. A group comprised of experts in the associated fields voted in by peers.

 

[Angilion]

The length of the half life of of a radioisotope does not directly relate to how radioactive something is. [..]

Indirectly, though? Resulting in a reasonably high level of correlation?

Here's what I was thinking:

Radiation is emitted from a radioactive substance when an atom in it undergoes radioactive decay (and thus becomes a different atom). The frequency at which that happens would affect both the amount of radiation emitted (each decay emits an amount of radiation, so more decays per unit of time means more radiation per unit of time) and the half life (more decays per unit of time means the material changes to something else faster).

More complicated, of course, due to decay chains and different types of radiation and different energy levels of radiation, but that was my thinking. Am I completely off the track? Or simplifying to such an extent that it's fundamentally wrong? My knowledge is very superficial, so either is entirely possible. I am not a lawyer physicist.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

China will rule the world one day. They do what’s needed while we dither in bureaucracy.

 

[physichull]

Indirectly, though? Resulting in a reasonably high level of correlation?

Here's what I was thinking:

Radiation is emitted from a radioactive substance when an atom in it undergoes radioactive decay (and thus becomes a different atom). The frequency at which that happens would affect both the amount of radiation emitted (each decay emits an amount of radiation, so more decays per unit of time means more radiation per unit of time) and the half life (more decays per unit of time means the material changes to something else faster).

More complicated, of course, due to decay chains and different types of radiation and different energy levels of radiation, but that was my thinking. Am I completely off the track? Or simplifying to such an extent that it's fundamentally wrong? My knowledge is very superficial, so either is entirely possible. I am not a lawyer physicist.

It is of course possible that over the passage of time some material becomes more onerous in terms of doses - with the U-232 chain you eventually in-grow Tl-208 which gives a high energy gamma of around 2.5 MeV, and this peaks at around 10-12 years (time it takes to get to equilibrium, before it then all decays away again) - Tl-208 is a problem with deleted U or Th reactors where they produce U-233 as the driver, but U-232 is also produced in small amounts. That's why solid fuel manufacture for Th reactors may be an issue - for conventional PWR fuel, unirradiated fuel is much less onerous from a dose point of view (during the manufacture process).

For spent fuel (any kind), it generally becomes much less onerous over time. In terms of what you were referring to earlier in the post - with regards to dealing with the waste, spent fuel is still incredibly onerous, be it from a normal PWR or a Th reactor, so whilst Th reactor spent fuel may be much less onerous than PWR spent fuel, it will still be a handful!

 

[BUDFORCE]

It is of course possible that over the passage of time some material becomes more onerous in terms of doses - with the U-232 chain you eventually in-grow Tl-208 which gives a high energy gamma of around 2.5 MeV, and this peaks at around 10-12 years (time it takes to get to equilibrium, before it then all decays away again) - Tl-208 is a problem with deleted U or Th reactors where they produce U-233 as the driver, but U-232 is also produced in small amounts. That's why solid fuel manufacture for Th reactors may be an issue - for conventional PWR fuel, unirradiated fuel is much less onerous from a dose point of view (during the manufacture process).

For spent fuel (any kind), it generally becomes much less onerous over time. In terms of what you were referring to earlier in the post - with regards to dealing with the waste, spent fuel is still incredibly onerous, be it from a normal PWR or a Th reactor, so whilst Th reactor spent fuel may be much less onerous than PWR spent fuel, it will still be a handful!

Someone's been watching Scott Manley........

 

[ahar]

When I was a kid a few of my mates parents worked at JET (the fusion research facility, it stands for Joint European Torus). I remember them telling me we were around 25 years away from a proper commercial fusion reactor.

25 years later, they're still there or (mostly) retired. JET is still in Culham researching away, and we're still 25 years away from a proper commercial reactor in the UK.....

 

[physichull]

When I was a kid a few of my mates parents worked at JET (the fusion research facility, it stands for Joint European Torus). I remember them telling me we were around 25 years away from a proper commercial fusion reactor.

25 years later, they're still there or (mostly) retired. JET is still in Culham researching away, and we're still 25 years away from a proper commercial reactor in the UK.....

Hehe! Pretty much. I've been round there and its an impressive place.

 

[Energize]

When I was a kid a few of my mates parents worked at JET (the fusion research facility, it stands for Joint European Torus). I remember them telling me we were around 25 years away from a proper commercial fusion reactor.

25 years later, they're still there or (mostly) retired. JET is still in Culham researching away, and we're still 25 years away from a proper commercial reactor in the UK.....

In 25 years we've gone from a record of getting 0.67x of the energy we put into the plasma back out again to just 0.70x, we need to get that to about 20x just to break even on electrical power for something like ITER.

 

[Angilion]

In 25 years we've gone from a record of getting 0.67x of the energy we put into the plasma back out again to just 0.70x, we need to get that to about 20x just to break even on electrical power for something like ITER.

Not even that, unfortunately. The NIF figure is measured differently. It's not based on total energy in, just on energy reaching the fuel pellet. Which also matters, but which isn't the same thing.

The progress has been a lot more than it might appear from the q numbers, though. In many cases, experiments are deliberately run on lower than maximum possible power as the point is to learn rather than to set records for the sake of it. And learning has happened. A lot of it. Quite a bit of the learning has been learning that practical fusion is even harder than it was previously thought to be, but there has been a lot of progress. ITER wouldn't have been possible without the results of experiments from JET, for example, and JET has been upgraded again as a result of stuff learned from those experiments. There has also been progress in related stuff, such as magnets. Very recently, there was a major improvement in magnets. The new ones can't be retrofitted to existing fusion reactor designs, but they can be incorporated into new designs.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

When I was a kid a few of my mates parents worked at JET (the fusion research facility, it stands for Joint European Torus). I remember them telling me we were around 25 years away from a proper commercial fusion reactor.

25 years later, they're still there or (mostly) retired. JET is still in Culham researching away, and we're still 25 years away from a proper commercial reactor in the UK.....

I remember it being said 50 years ago that it was 25 years away, its still 25 years away...

Good. China to rule the world by 2050.

Quite likely.

 

[4K8KW10]

Quite likely.

Say bye-bye to Taiwan and their industry, for example the TSMC.

We need a multi-polar world with many strong sides which compete with each other.
Otherwise, as I said, we will be doomed. No one wants the Chinese system to rule the world.

China will rule the world one day. They do what’s needed while we dither in bureaucracy.

I heard a prophecy that the Chinese will be to a large extent killed from the face of the Earth, after a nuclear world conflict.