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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The only obstacles are a general lack of real world experience.

    Both Thorium and Uranium were being researched in the 60s, but only one can readily be made into nuclear weaponry. So that’s where the research was focused, and not just in the US. Thorium molten salt reactors aren’t a particularly new idea, they date back to the same time period.

    Now that nuclear weaponry isn’t the focus, we’re finally seeing real research like this in alternative nuclear sources. Thorium is much more abundant than Uranium, and is fairly readily available worldwide. The byproducts are much less reactive, and the amount of nuclear “waste” is a fraction of uranium. Even there though, the nuclear waste issue has been blown way out of proportion. Most nuclear waste is not long term, only a small fraction is the stuff that lasts thousands of years, and the US already has more than enough storage built to store all long term nuclear waste for every reactor in operation several times over. But most of the programs to actually implement these processes have been cancelled because of various anti-nuclear and NIMBY groups. So instead in most cases… That waste just gets stored on site, at the nuclear plant. Which isn’t particularly an issue, but I think we can all agree is the worst option of all if you’re worried about potential contamination.


  • And yet, it is still true. Renewables that work via environmental factors like wind and solar will always be reliant on something else to help store excess power, and those storage options are still very limited. Battery storage is taking off, but it is still nowhere near the level to run an entire city for an extended period of time like overnight.

    We still need a base load option that’s reliably available at any time and quickly scaleable to handle burst demand. That is currently handled by fossil fuels, and can be directly replaced via nuclear, essentially as a drop in nearly 1 for 1 replacement.


  • The problem with current battery tech, even the experimental stuff, is just the sheer capacity needed for something that can get close to powering a city through renewable gaps, like overnight for solar. It necessitates looking at alternate “battery” options outside of traditional battery tech. Battery storage can help extremely well for outages and instability, but providing a city amount of power for potentially 8-12 hours of renewable downtime is an entirely different story.

    Things like pumped hydro storage, or solar heat batteries are good examples of alternatives. Your “battery” isn’t storing electricity directly, but instead an energy form that you can then take back out later to generate electricity from. Unfortunately most of those also have specific requirements that aren’t very universal, like most city-scale renewables.

    The best is almost always going to be a combination of things, but that is rarely the cost effective option, and sadly that’s what really matters with our current systems. Fossil fuel options are almost always the cheapest to build and operate, largely because they don’t actually have to deal with their pollution.


  • I get so tired of these shit takes that obviously haven’t put much thought into the topic based on the clear barely surface level perspective, but love to repeat the same talking points confidently.

    1. It’s a research reactor, it will be relatively small because it’s not intended to provide a production power source.
    2. It can operate 24 hours a day, independent of weather or most external variables.
    3. Its power is variable and can handle varying loads on demand.

    Most renewables like solar and wind cannot handle the second and third points well, of at all. And options that can like hydro and geothermal power are very location dependent.

    You need to stop thinking of nuclear as an alternative to renewables and instead as the replacement for the fossil fuel plants that provide base power generation 24/7/365 like coal, gas, and the peaker plants.

    Renewables alone do not solve modern societal power needs, but we can replace fossil fuels immediately with better options, like nuclear. As it is uranium power plants are extremely misunderstood by the public from decades of disinformation from the fossil fuel AND renewable industries and a fundamental misunderstanding of radioactivity by the public. Thorium specifically goes around that by removing the uranium Boogeyman, and meltdown risk. Most molten salt reactor designs operate on a Fail-Safe design principle that doesn’t require power to continuously cool the fuel to prevent meltdown like most current uranium reactors do, instead requiring power to prevent that failsafe, often via an ice plug actively keeping the fuel in the system for operation.






  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    30 days ago

    Let’s get that full quoted sentence instead of the two worda out of context that let you post the link you wanted.

    And if we look at nature in general, non-monogamous breeding across all species is the most common.

    Didn’t even need the whole sentence, just the word before those… “Across all species”.


  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    30 days ago

    There’s kind of my point. It is a societal construct, one largely tied to religion and thus easily mapped to religious expansion across the globe.

    “Normal” for things like this is meaningless, because it is entirely based in arbitrary beliefs, not anything inherent in being human. It is based entirely on fake limits we’ve imposed on ourselves as a culture, nothing more.

    This is really only “abnormal” in a traditional, Christianity-based modern societal culture, and that’s nowhere near the entire world.