Nuclear Fission Power...worth it?

[Lemon[H]ead]

http://www.zzz.com.ru/

There is now much more waste than can be safely handled, which is why the US government is pushing scientists to hurry up and approve the use of Yucca Mountain as a storage area for countless tons of radioactive material.

sadly the UK government didnt think too hard when it considered scotland as a nuclear dump. but more to the point should we invest more in nuclear fusion, or more renewable forms of energy (wind/solar power)

[willy_ph]

There is a site approx. 40 kilometres away that is being proposed for the internation ITER project, a research facility that will explore the feasibility of fusion power generation.

Interesting stuff, but I'm fearful of the project because of the lack of information regarding the potential dangers of it.

[JacobM5727]

thats why they need to hurry and figure out cold fusion.. mmm.. fusion

[samwichse]

I think space elevators will solve our energy needs if they're ever made practical.

Basically running a long tether all the way from space to the surface of the earth would form a grounding spot for some of the static electricity in the atmosphere, causing the lightning naturally created by the turbulance of the atmosphere to drain down the tether.

Nasa did an experiment with one that deployed in space but apparently overloaded and melted.

It's a purely chemical/engineering problem, requiring a breakthrough in materials, but doable IMO. Plus non polluting...

Sam

EDIT: People have been wishing we could somehow capture the power of lightning, this is basically the way to do it.

[MD1032]

I think we should eject ou nuclear wastes into space. It would be expensive, but you have to admit the moon is useless and would make a handy, safe storage place for radioactive wastes.

[Redwolf]

For now, Fission is powerful, cheap, and relatively safe (except for the occasional catastrophic nuclear meltdown, which is a bit less than safe). Until we get Fusion or other renewable sources of energy, we'll have to use at least some fission. Fossil Fuels can't provide the world forever (something America needs to learn) and solar and wind power are too unreliable except in a few places where it is continuous. Upper atmosphere wind generators would be a great source of reiable energy, when it is perfected. Hydroelectricity is the best method except that it is incredibly expesnive, and requires a river to turn into a lake and possible destroy some towns along the way. Microwave energy has been discussed, but it may cause cancer (bad) and mistargeting could be inresting (although I doubt it).

I'm not COMPLETELY for fission though. It has to have proiven safe designs and the reactors have to be built in ways that put tanks to shame. We have to protect the reactors from all kinds of problems, like bad weather, fault lines, terrorist attacks, and human error and equipment failure. PWR reactors so far have been the safest (it is said that had Three Mile Island not been a PWR design, it would have been bigger than Chreynobyl). Waste disposal would have to be a big priority (however, nuke reactors only account for 5-10% of all the nuclear waste. The rest is from nuclear missiles, which are a b**** to maintain).

Realise there are things reactors are good for besides power. Breeder Reactors (ones that can make materials radioactive) have many uses nowadays, from the tritium that lights up the hands on your glow-in-the-dark watch to the cobalt that helps doctors fight cancer.

http://www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Pres...sp1996n15.html

Technology is not inheriently good or evil. The technology that could have exterminated humanity can help to save it. The technologies of cloning and molecular biology have many uses outside of the evils that come to mind (imagine a benign virus that infects only cancer cells...)

[phenious]

Originally posted by samwichse
EDIT: People have been wishing we could somehow capture the power of lightning, this is basically the way to do it.

1.21Jigawatts! Great scott! I am for the cold fission. Or the lightning thing

-: phenious :-

[Redwolf]

Lightning catpure? Great! But where do you store all the energy? I doubt 1 million Duracells are gonna be too efficent

[MD1032]

Exactly. We'd need some way to store it FAST.