Comment on China has world’s first operational thorium nuclear reactor thanks to ‘strategic stamina’
Tattorack@lemmy.world 4 days agoRadioactive nuclear materials comes from the Earth. All one has to do is put it back in the Earth. Finland built a massive underground nuclear waste storage facility, but there are also technologies being developed to reclaim nuclear waste (because only a very small amount if the material actually gets used in the fission process).
xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
pretty sure it’s not so simple….
ameancow@lemmy.world 4 days ago
For the amount of actual nuclear waste, it kind of is. Earth is so huge and the amount of waste so small, that you could bury some under a mountain somewhere and chances are high that it would never see daylight again nor would never be found by anyone in the future.
Even despite this, extraordinary measures are taken to make sure nothing escapes the containment until such time that Earth’s crust has completely rolled down into the mantle or the mountain erodes, which by then it wouldn’t be nuclear waste anymore.
LordWiggle@lemmy.world 4 days ago
We need to store the waste for thousands of years. This is bad. We are able to recycle the waste for more power but we’re not allowed to because it produces a tiny bit enriched uranium and that’s not allowed by the pact the US and Russia made. But recycling waste is tech from the 70’s and it can reduce the half life of 100.000 years to 100 years.
Thorium however, is a different story. It doesn’t work with gamma radiation but with alpha radiation. Alpha radiation is the most dangerous form of radiation, but it doesn’t go far and doesn’t go through many things. You can contain it with a piece of paper. Gamma radiation is the least harmful form of radiation but the big issue is it goes really far and goes through almost anything.
So waste from a Thorium reactor is much less harmful, easy to contain, also has a very short half life (I don’t know how long but it’s really short, as in several years) so Thorium really is awesome. Thorium is also a waste product of many other mining operations so it’s already a form of recycling. The downside of a Thorium reactor is that it’s far more complex than the reactors we know so it’s very hard and expensive to build, more than a regular reactor. So it will cost a lot, takes a long time, but it’s an extremily safe and wise investment.
ameancow@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I feel like you didn’t read my comment and just wanted to talk about thorium. Which is fine, yes I know it generates less waste and creates its own fuel and all that, I am speaking about nuclear waste as we know it right now, from our hundreds of traditional power plants, the things that MOST people associate with dangers of nuclear waste. Which I explained is not even remotely the problem people think it is, because those thousands of years pass in a blink of an eye deep under earth’s crust.
Litebit@lemmy.world 4 days ago
so thorium is harmless… unless you eat it.
Rakonat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It’s a lot simpler than the majority of humanity reverting to pre-industrial lifestyles.
xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
you don’t know anything about nuclear energy