Pu-239 should be burned up for energy, not stored. Newer reactor designs try to do this. Cs-137 is a bit more of an issue.

You better hope an enemy, foreign or domestic, never successfully sabotages or blows one up. The nuclear lobby is really hoping for instance that Putin doesn’t blow up a nuclear plant in Ukraine.

Gotcha. Some would argue the contrary insofar as deployment time and ease. New nuclear has been taking some time, except in China.

When I say energy inefficient, I mean that choosing not to pursue nuclear is an inefficient energy policy.

Um, I was directly answering the question asked "why is everyone so hung up over fusion anyway? What's so great about fusion?" I understand that most know why fusion is so great, I wasn't spouting the obvious just for my chuckles, a question was asked, I gave a reply

Yes, people always look to nuclear as some magic fix but ignore the fact that scaling up nuclear would take decades with huge up front costs and even then the power generated is not cost competitive with renewables today, let alone in decades when they start generating power.

We probably need some more nuclear capacity, and we'll probably need government incentives to make it financially viable for power companies to do it, but really 80-90% of our generation can be done pretty easily with renewables (including point of use generation) and an improved grid.

Just think about that for a second. The reactor didn't merely "break" that makes it sound like a simple mechanical failure in your car. When a reactor fails you have as good a likelihood of severe disaster as you do containment. And the containment of three mile island wasn't really containment, they just managed to stop the meltdown from going critical. Radioactive smoke still spewed into the air, even if there wasn't a chrynople style explosion with the meltdown or a Fukushima melt through the floor and into the ocean. Either was entirely possible, and it's less that the incident happened in the "good ol' US of A" than it was fortunate luck.

My main point was that if we ended up opening enough ractors to meet our current and future energy needs, eventually, sooner than later, we would have reactor meltdowns, and some would be like Fukushima and some would be like chrynople, and yes, some would be like three mile island.

Point is, we don't want that old 40 year technology running our reactors. As has been mentioned, there are way safer reactor designs now than what we are using ones that contribute far less waste. There is still was, but it is fractions upon fractions of what the current in use reactors produce.

Completely agree.

It’s expensive and takes a long time before that cost pays for its self. The pollution and cost to / lost life is lower than even green energy’s.

We can see the national security risk that petroleum is. We have cower to the petrol states ability to be nefarious and pull us by the balls. All of our worst foes come in the form of these states accept China (which is another thing altogether).

The faster we stop suckling from the black gold tit, the faster we extend the force of the liberal homogeny by muttering the worst actors power economically. The only down side is that areas like the Middle East will become even worse humanitarian crisis stricken when their cash cow sinks. The managing of that decline will be trying. None of these place are looking at the long term post fossil fuel world. And Russia will fade unless they get more resource rich when the permafrost opens up the attic.

Why would you describe it as energy inefficient? Heat conversion efficiency is just as good as any other thermal electric generator. With higher temperature reactors newer Brayton cycle could be used for 60%+ heat conversion efficiency. As far as mass to energy produced, there's nothing that even comes close, it's in a class all by itself with a 2 million to one mass/unit advantage over fossil fuels.

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Conversely greater energy security and independence makes for a more stable economy and political climate.

Though power reactors don't make an easy path to bombs, more importantly the educational infrastructure a nation should mature to to support nuclear energy would provide the kind of brain power needed to get a weapons program started. Still never cheap or easy.

It's a valuable future resource. Absolutely no need to do this.

There's a lot of myths to unpack there. First, the USA is completing 2 new reactors in Georgia. As for accidents, the current fleet is run very well, and newer designs like the AP1000 design in Georgia are dramatically safer.

As for fusion being "the holy grail" not so much really for a few reasons: 1. Fission is so much easier to accomplish with the benefits of a clean waste stream, 2. As for efficiency, it depends on what aspect. For net energy return on energy investment, we shall see when the ITER project is completed in France, and conversion that depends on how much of that heat can be converted to electric energy. 3. The waste stream of fission is an easy to manage problem, especially relative to fossil fuels (zero management). 4. Gen 3 and 4 reactors take on the emergency cooling issues very well, and especially the scaling factor of the new reactors from Nuscale offer a repeatability to make a faster mass scale deployment.

So fission may not be perfect but fuels with far less energy density have made energy revolutions before (coal). Fusion just may end up needing a support network of fission reactors in order to make it cleaner from end to end, and if you're at that point then why add the extra layer of complexity with fusion? To me, fusion is a distraction from an already vastly superior fission reactors we can build now.

Bad faith argument ignoring reality.

interesting, thanks:)

Stop staw-manning, you can't characterize someone else's position with so much rhetorical flourish so early in your response.

Dirty pool.

>Look into three mile island.

Three mile island did not cause a single injury to the public. The reactor broke. Yes. But it was contained. Everyone in the community was safe.

You've misunderstood my argument and made multiple logical fallacies.

Morality cannot be compared to gravity. Gravity can be measured. It can predict outcomes. It exists regardless of humanity. You've simply presumed the concept of morality (which apparently only humanity can recognize?) can exist independently of the only species which qualifies as a "moral agent." Your argument begs the question in that it presumes that which it seeks to prove.

Please go look up void coefficients in reactor physics. Positive vs. negative makes a big difference.

I’d argue that it’s not will, it’s money. Speaking as an absolute idiot in all things nuclear, and with zero expertise in energy subjects of any sort, I’ll bet the legacy fossil fuel industry was a part of the effort to vilify nuclear, went to great lengths to gin up fear after some near-catastrophes and led the call for hyper regulation and greater “safety procedures” to hamper construction. I have absolutely no proof, have no documentation and zero evidence to support my outlandish claims, but it wouldn’t be the first time one mega industry sullied the reputation of another that it perceived as a threat. Follow the money. Oil, coal and natural gas would lose billions of dollars if nuclear power took off and replaced just a fraction of the fossil fuel industry’s death grip on America. Will power? Come on, man. It’s not like people were sitting around a table and sighing in frustration because nuclear SEEMED hard…”Godh, this seems really really hard…,” it BECAME hard, it was MADE difficult, it was over regulated and it’s dangers were hyped to ensure that it was hysterically feared. But that wasn’t by accident - that was by design. When there’s THAT much money to lose, things don’t happen by accident. No facts, actual documentation nor other legitimate technical or industry references were used in the development of this pessimistic, anti-capitalist screed. Any similarity to any well-articulated thesis, hypothesis or argument, living or dead is purely coincidental.*

If you haven’t, check out Small Module Reactors - by being much smaller they reduce a lot of the upfront costs

You don't see how technology and innovation can deal with problems currently out of our reach? Really? Technology means more efficient reactors, possibly different fuels, better storage and other things that are involved with nuclear technology. They are already working on ways to reduce the half life of waste materials as well as repurpose those waste materials to be used in other reactors. The more nuclear gets invested into it the better it will get, its plain and simple and the entirety of human technological advancement over our history shows that.

It’s shocking how few people understand nuclear energy doesn’t have to have radiative waste and it doesn’t require mythical physics. It’s called aneutronic fusion and it’s accepted conventional theory. We just have to actually fund the research and we could have plenty of cheap and clean fusion energy using hydrogen boron fuel.

We also have nuclear battery technology that is getting impressive and it’s feasible we could find solutions that are eventually cost competitive using relatively safe materials.

Also, current compact fission reactors designs are projected to go on the market by 2026. They have a ceramic coated fuel source to make it more safe and this likely will eventually become cost competitive with natural gas for certain industrial markets.

I’m glad your also open to cold fusion. The DOE is funding $10M in this research is it’s a long shot but deserves more attention.

Look into three mile island.

Also saying we haven't had any accidents isn't really a great reason. We also hardly have any nuclear power plants left. The US hasn't built a new power plant in like 40+ years. There are plenty of conventional power plants that cause work place injuries every year, of we had the same number of nuclear power plants as those, thered be no doubt that we'd have issues. And all it takes is one 3 mile island, one chyrnople, one Fukushima, and the public will be against fission again.

Fusion is the holy grail of nuclear energy. It uses light elements to create power so there aren't heavy radioactive isotope byproducts. Plus fusion is considerably more powerful, aka energy efficient compared to fission.

Fusion is clean nuclear energy while Fission is dirty nuclear energy.

We can create Fusion bombs, but that's hot Fusion, meaning we have to use a fission bomb to jump start the process, making the detonation dirty.

Nuclear reactors don't work like bombs, so we can't just nuke a Fusion reactor into existence.

Jumpstarting a Fusion reactor without a hot detonation is the holy grail of limitless clean energy-cold Fusion. And is why everyone is so "obsessed" over it.

I’m not sure tech can solve the problem of a 24,000 year half life problem of Plutonium 239. That’s more of a physics thingy.