Nuclear Power

[Scot Dutchy]

Still puffing fags.

[Brian Peacock]

What we need is more, new, nuclear plants to replace the old, and bugger Areva if they are old generation, we need tried and true, not experimental stuff... then again, I suspect they have lost ALL skill at building plants, even older models... after all, the last spree of building was 40 years ago, the people who worked on that are all retired.

The quandary is, how do you drive technological innovation and progress without planning for and investing in the next generation of power plants? The issue in the UK is not whether the government should support development of the next generation of power plants, they do and are, it's just that they continue to focus on massive gas-fired, coal-fired and nuclear project and have de-invested, both politically and financially, from renewables and smaller local solutions.

[Svartalf]

I'm not opposed to technological progress, but since the 'new generation' EPR plants can't seem to get built, I'm ready to rely on older tech while we wait for the new to be ready

[Forty Two]

I blame the Internet. It confuses common folk.

So, that's where your confusion comes from....

[Jason]

I blame the Internet. It confuses common folk.

So, that's where your confusion comes from....

I find that young people today from highschoolers to undergrads are very familiar with terms and subjects, can even recite factoids about them sometimes, but have very little understanding of them especially in a larger context. I blame the pop-education videos on youtube that pretend to cover a topic in 5 or 10 minutes.

[Sean Hayden]

I blame the bell curve and don't sweet it.

[JimC]

I have never sweeted the bell curve, and don't intend to start now...

[Brian Peacock]

I thought we were supposed to blame rap music and video games.

[JimC]

No, at Ratz we blame Pappa...

[rainbow]

[DRSB]

How bad must this radiation be, folks?

It was the worst nuclear disaster in history, spewing thousands of tons of radioactive waste into the atmosphere and prompting the evacuation of more than 100,000 people.

But thirty years after its reactor number four exploded in a pillar of radioactive smoke, the abandoned wasteland around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is one of the most important habitats for scientists studying native wildlife in Europe.

“Thirty years ago, two things happened at once. The whole area was contaminated with radiation, and the human population vanished,” said professor Mike Wood, a Salford University naturalist, as he pushed plastic sampling sticks into a patch of irradiated earth.

The “zone,” as is it popularly known, has become an improbable sanctuary for more elusive fauna including Lynx, endangered European Bison - that wandered across the border from Belarus - and a growing population of Przewalski’s Horses, a wild equine released in the area in the 1990s. The extremely rare breed is doing so well in the area that herds are beginning to stray beyond the zone.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04 ... chernobyl/

[Svartalf]

What'ss the lifespan of that fauna compared to normal wildlife statistics? maybe they do die prematurely from various cancers... but in the meantime, they thrive indeed.

[JimC]

They thrive (at least relatively) because of the absence of man.

[Svartalf]

quite relative

[Tero]

We have a single reactor now. it takes some 200 engineers to run it.

The Cooper Station produces about 1,365 megawatts of energy annually, Kent said. NuScale Power, a company based in Portland, Oregon, is among those leading efforts into small modular reactors. It estimates the energy production of one reactor at about 77 megawatts annually.

That equates to a need of about 18 small modular reactors to equal the production of a station the size of Cooper.

https://www.1011now.com/2023/10/28/nebr ... -reactors/