Jacob
What goes around comes around.
Not at all - over population is the evolutionary natural selection solution. It's a very crude mechanism but increases the probability of there being survivors.
This puts the Virus into the shadows
- Thread starter Spectric
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When talking about waste storage and containment, it's not hugely technical and the infrastructure is comparatively simple and robust.
Humanity has been good enough at capturing and transferring knowledge, that we would be able to retrain individuals in fields like radiation protection/monitoring, civil engineering etc. Orders of magnitude quicker than the infrastructure would decay.
Your point is valid with regards to actual reactors and fuel processing plants; a total or significant loss of skilled personnel could result in a plant getting shut down in a manner which was safe but irreversible, although because they're generally left for decades (to allow radiation levels to reduce) before decommissioning begins in earnest we would still have time to develop new skilled individuals to make the site safe in the long term.
Compare your consumption to that of your forefathers.
My ancestors used less efficient homes, vehicles, etc, but still consumed less energy. Probably by a long shot.
Efficiency doesn't amount to much if utilization is high. What was the average SF lived in 100 years ago? It may not have been too different for the upper middle class, but the big difference for my relatives (who did have a large living space) is that only part of it was heated in the winter. The water supply was kept in the heated area, and the rest of the house was "dry" so that climate control wasn't needed.
Ever have a relative born around 1900 use air conditioning (i don't mean around 1900 - I mean I didn't see them use it all the way through the end of their life in the 1980s)? I sure didn't. Trips to town (for people of means) was once per week, and traveling 30 miles was considered a long trip.
Every single thing in my house is more efficient on a per item basis, but to my spouse, a 5 degree difference in one part of the house is far too much. Didn't even have A/C in the house as a kid until I was about 14 (we used fans in the summer, and trust me, it was hotter where I grew up than anywhere in the UK, and same for colder in the winter -we heated only half the house during the day, and the upstairs was heated for two two hour swaths - starting about an hour before bed to an hour after, and then turning on again an hour before waking.
All of the old houses had doors dividing different parts of the house so that you didn't have to heat the entire house. What do the new energy efficient floor plans look like? They're open except for bedrooms.
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Jacob
What goes around comes around.
That's a wild guess. Another pandemic could change the picture over night. The likelihood of pandemics is increasing rapidly, not least due to increased population but also under the shadow of increasing resistance to antibiotics
They thought that before Chernobyl, which could have been a world changing catastrophe. Do you really thing Chernobyl was the last major nuclear disaster ever to happen?
Not necessarily so! A very optimistic view.
I am sure you will no doubt be shocked to hear this and you might want to sit down before reading further, but optimistic people do exist, they aren't just characters in TV shows, they are living, breathing people. Crazy, but true!
Thank God for Bill Gates:
sploo
Somewhat extinguished member
Yea, I don't really understand the intention of that Cumbria article. Commercial fusion reactors will be available "20 years after you fund it properly" (that's been the same answer for decades).
What experimental reactors there are currently are hugely expensive, and generally international collaborations; so the idea that £220 million would produce anything (let alone something by 2024) is not in the realms of reality. For comparison, the ITER site preparation was in 2008 (13 years ago) and it's still not finished. It's also expected to cost north of 20 billion Euros.
Yes that worked when people died younger, there were more wars and we lived and worked in a more hazzardous world but now we live longer and have reduced life threatening hazzards so populations expand freely and everyone wants the better life, so population rising whilst natural resources decline and polution and enviromental damage grows. Something is going to have to give eventually because we cannot keep meeting demands, the only solution is going to be global and when we all trust each other enough to work as one and not keep thinking of the profit, look at how fast the vacine has been developed so pooled resources and stop wasting money on pointless projects and who knows what could be developed.
sploo
Somewhat extinguished member
Sadly, almost certainly not, and I believe there is a lot of concern about the poor practices and corner (cost) cutting of some of the companies that run nuclear plants. However, it is worth noting that Chernobyl was a very old design, and modern plants are much safer in their operation.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
They were pretty optimistic before Fukushima, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island!
The film Chernobyl is a good watch - it's supposed to be a realistic reconstruction. Still makes a good film even if it's all lies. Essential viewing!
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/chernobyl-2019
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
They tend to stop expanding when people have a better life.
When the going gets tough reproduction rates increase. Fact of life. Everything, from the amoeba upwards.
If a pandemic wipes out so many people that we're plunged back into the dark ages, then frankly any conceivable release of nuclear materials isn't going to be that big of an issue, compared to the daily struggle for survival.
That said the fundimental technology needed for "minimum viable" nuclear waste containment dates back to the Romans (water resistant cement).
In any case the sooner we proceed to start mineralisation in insoluble physical forms and geological storage for nuclear waste, the safer and less technology dependent it will be.
Currently the fear of nuclear waste drives politically motivated decisions to do nothing which mean it actually continues to be stored in more dangerous (and resource/maintainance intensive) forms and places than it could or should be; that cannot conceivably serve anyone's aims or objectives regarding nuclear power regardless of if they are pro or anti.
They (the state apparatus of the USSR) actually knew that the RBMK design used at Chernobyl was inherently unstable from the very beginning, and the whole reason for the test which precipitated the accident was to verify that operators were able to maintain control when it entered an unstable state.
It was intentionally built to a compromised design, without certain control features which were known to be needed to make it inherently safe (which following the accident were quietly retrofitted to other reactors of the type including the three other units at Chernobyl which ran until 2000).
The decision to then classify the design's safety issues as a state secret rather than share them with the safety regulators or the operators who had to run it was grossly negligent in a way I can't even begin to convey in words.
The decision to then do a live test to see if they could control it when it encountered a fault condition which could cause loss of control, by deliberately creating that fault... Was just completely insane.
The whole thing was an accident waiting to happen, and could have been predicted from the start because it was known not to be inherently safe.
I seriously doubt we will ever see anything even close to that level of incompetence, acceptance of intolerable risks, or complete lack of awareness of consequences ever again. Whilst we have seen serious nuclear incidents since then (Fukushima being the next worst) but nothing even comes close to that level of idiocy, or consequences.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
So you do believe that that will turn out to be the worst nuclear disaster ever!
Human idiocy is only one of many possible causes and it tends to get the blame only after the event.
Trainee neophyte
Established Member
Chernobyl was human error. So was Three Mile Island, and so was the placement of Fukashima. No matter how good your design, there will always be monkeys running the system, so there will always be the opportunity for "Oops, my bad. So sorry."
If we want to replace the entire world energy budget with just nuclear by 2050, then the boffins have calculated that you would need to increase the number of reactors worldwide by 10% per annum, starting in 2004. That equates to commissioning a new reactor once a week, every week, from 2004 to 2050. I don't think we are going to make that target.
I have also seen somewhere an estimate that if there were that many reactors running, there is enough fuel in the entire planet's crust to run them all for two years. Nuclear is great, but it isn't the answer. It also hides the non green footprint by ignoring all the emissions from steel, cement, uranium mining etc.
We are going to fix our CO2 output by running out of affordable oil. Just because you can extract it at $80 a barrel, doesn't mean people can afford to buy it. And when it takes more than one barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, the party is over.
If we want to replace the entire world energy budget with just nuclear by 2050, then the boffins have calculated that you would need to increase the number of reactors worldwide by 10% per annum, starting in 2004. That equates to commissioning a new reactor once a week, every week, from 2004 to 2050. I don't think we are going to make that target.
I have also seen somewhere an estimate that if there were that many reactors running, there is enough fuel in the entire planet's crust to run them all for two years. Nuclear is great, but it isn't the answer. It also hides the non green footprint by ignoring all the emissions from steel, cement, uranium mining etc.
We are going to fix our CO2 output by running out of affordable oil. Just because you can extract it at $80 a barrel, doesn't mean people can afford to buy it. And when it takes more than one barrel of oil to extract a barrel of oil, the party is over.
I think it's extremely unlikely we will ever see something that severe happen again by accident, in the still fairly unlikely event something of that severity did occur again an act of war or terrorism seems more plausible as the cause.
The reason I think it's unlikely is that Humanity is usually pretty good at learning from big, dramatic and scary mistakes, and the more severe the mistake the faster the new knowledge goes in.
That the Soviet Union (not noted for its willingness to accept fault or admit failings) was willing to undertake a huge overhaul of it's entire nuclear industry in the aftermath speaks to that point.
Yes it was a shame that the mechanism designed to advert such an event was itself flawed when used in that particular situation, and made worse by the fact they knew about it but had decided that situation could not occur, correct unless initiated on purpose as a test.
It is also worth noting that you can spend weeks or months listing all potential hazzard synario's and decide on how to mitigate against them but the weak link is the human being, the unpredictable part of an equation.
Anthraquinone
Established Member
There is still a lot of coal in the ground under the UK and also some shale gas - although no one really knows how much. When the oil finally does start to run out - who knows when- I would not bet against mining being restarted if only for chemical feed stock.
Anthraquinone
Established Member
While we are in a happy frame of mind there are other things that may go wrong for life as we know it.
Methane clathrates in the ocean. A small rise in deep ocean temperatures could trigger the release of gigatones on methane which would make the current CO2 problems look trival.
Don,t forget the super volcano under Yellowstone that is overdue for an eruption.
Stray and undetected near earth asteroids / comets that we cannot do anything about.
and there are probably many more I have not thought of. On the plus side the cockroaches will probably survive whatever happens.
Methane clathrates in the ocean. A small rise in deep ocean temperatures could trigger the release of gigatones on methane which would make the current CO2 problems look trival.
Don,t forget the super volcano under Yellowstone that is overdue for an eruption.
Stray and undetected near earth asteroids / comets that we cannot do anything about.
and there are probably many more I have not thought of. On the plus side the cockroaches will probably survive whatever happens.
I never understand why people always seem to think progress is a bad thing and that the future will be bad. By every metric we can measure the present is better than any period in (known) history. Every bit of data we have suggests that things will only continue to get better and that improvement has always been through innovation and advancement. So Cheer up! 
Droogs
Not the Sharpest Moderator in the box
Dont forget earth crust displacement or magnetic field flipping. also the overdue massive comet strike, oh and andromeda is going to hit us in 4.5 billion years, should be quite a show
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