American teenager designs compact nuclear reactor

reply to post by purplemer


Lately I have very aware of my limited mental capacities. This 18 yr old needs to be fed, housed and kept happy for as long as he can come up with brilliant ideas like this. As for me, this old fogie will just sit back and admire.

reply to post by Caterminator


Lol. I am with you on that. It is the youth that should be allowed to create the world.

reply to post by Phage


Yes.
But it is far less radioactive than current waste material.

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by puncheex

 

So - tell me why I'm wrong. I'm new unclear.

Not "wrong". The "New Clear" came from the (way back) senate hearing introducing the idea of nuclear power as a new and "clear as a glass of water" power source. The same dog and pony show you play now. "Nuclear power is okay, we're making it better. We have "new" nuclear power."

Tell it to the kiddies. They're young, they'll believe you.

OK, thank you for the information; I now understand your reference. It doesn't seem realistic to use what an ignorant senator (or whoever said that) as an argument, but I suppose that the old saw about once burned twice shy applies. It of course assumes that all such statements concerning the utility of nuclear power are equally wrong, something you can't prove.

Then lets take some spent fuel, enrich it and make pretty fireworks that do this...

Statue of a buddha melted at Hiroshima. Bronze melts at 1700 degrees.

...and this means what? That your argument is that someone can steal nuclear waste and build a bomb out of it? Not unless he can enrich it, and if he can do that, why would he need to steal waste when he can just buy yellowcake and tool his bomb material the old fashioned way?

It is not very impressive to me that a nuke can generate 1700 degrees (F; 940 degrees C). So can acetylene. Do we ban flame welding?

Theres all kind of uses for nuclear fuel once its been exposed and depleted. Depleted Uranium penetrators...

DU

Uh-huh. You can also use it as breeding material and effectively burn it up for power. If it's in demand for that, perhaps we wouldn't be able to afford to use it for weapons? Just a thought...

You are aware that about 80% of reactor fuel is that self-same DU, right?

Now tell me (again) that Thorium reactors are different better and new. I'll remind you of the technology infrastructure already in place that feeds the Industrial military complex and will not change over to some less profitable, undeveloped, non military application pipe dream.

Oh, I don't know. When uranium gets expensive, and oil gets expensive (even more so than today), perhaps thorium will come into its own.

Personally I think the rhetoric is just to put people back to sleep and then restart the Uranium fueled nuclear power industry. Their popularity did take a hit after Fukushima.

Indeed it did take a hit. And maybe it will simply perpetuate the uranium industry. So...? Must we all go off and eat worms because the world isn't perfect?

If it had been viable, they would already be operating along side the water boilers. But not.

...except for the fact that the technology is only 50 years old. Boilers have been around for 400, and we've mastered than. Another 50, particularly with the pressures in place now, like global warming and peak oil? We'll see; meanwhile, for my money, we investigate and experiment, and see where it leads us.