They are not poorly secured, and the material is not weaponizable. Not to mention they are not toxic sites, the waste is put into a block of metal that is completely passively cooled so it can't melt. It is buried, and it is secured. And they would generally be deployed in multi unit farms. Plus, no need to throw away the energy, especially if it's cheaper than energy from gas or coal.
You're going the secure 1MW reactors with armed special ops ex soldiers? Even if it's a 10MW farm on average, doesn't that explode the cost?
And isn't the fact that they'd be "spec ops" caliber guards reflect that there is in fact a security risk with these materials getting into the wrong hands? If so it seems like a committed enemy could attack one of the thousands of these sites successfully. The distributed model seems problematic.
That's why the reactor can use thorium! There are big benefits. But frankly all advanced reactors are cooled by natural forces so are immune to fuel overheating. The challenge is more that the consequences of accidents are way overestimated. Nobody died from radiation at Fukushima, and no one is going to. The land is not uninhabitable, some bureaucrat who sets limits non-scientifically just says it is. If people actually paid attention to data and not just assume things based on what pop culture or some bureaucrat has falsely led them to believe, people would realize the consequences of catastrophic meltdowns just aren't that bad. They shouldn't happen, but we shouldn't speculate wildly about indirect costs that are generally made up and use that as a basis for their thoughts on nuclear power. Your comments are right on in that people need to investigate nuclear. I find most people who do, find it to be a great option, while it is generally those who are opposed that didn't like it at the onset without knowing much about it and then refused to learn about it. That is why the opponents are the significant minority in the US. So your advice is good, but it's directed at the wrong crowd.
It might be worth noting that you are one of the founders of UPower.
WHO estimates the increased cancer risk of people living inside the Fukushima Prefecture as being up to 70% higher (thyroid cancer for girls exposed as infants)[1]. Numerous other studies indicate increased cancer risk[2].
During the Fukushima meltdown, radiation levels of 3–170 μSv/h (= 17 mrem/hour) were measured within 30 km of the reactor[2]. Safe levels are 5000 mrem/year[3].
As I understand it, many argue that these of cancer risk estimates are high. I'll be happy to change my mind once medical scientist working in the field change theirs.
First, the reactors are consuming the fuel while deployed, but no waste is stored at the sites. It is stored centrally so there are a few centralized sites that hold the waste for a few hundred years. After which you could make things out of the material and use them around your home without issue.
The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes. And the materials are not less secure. The materials are being consumed by the reactor, and they are not dangerous as they are. In fact these reactors could destroy weapons grade material that is slated to be destroyed for fractions of the cost of programs the US is pursuing. Plus the reactors are secured when deployed. They are also buried and completely cooled by natural forces so they always stay cool. No fuel overheating.
The reactors cannot be hacked, and if a bad actor commandeered one, all they could do is turn it off safely. Even if they tried to make it hotter it would just turn off and cool down. There just isn't enough fuel in the core to do anything else.
To store it centrally, wouldn't you be transporting nuclear waste that is still toxic for hundreds of years all over the place? What if there's an accident during transportation? More reactors = more transportation = more nuclear waste accidents on the highway. Right?
> The reactors cannot be deviated for nefarious purposes.
I'm no nuclear expert but a quick search on Thorium reactors brings up some controversy over its potential for weaponization:
Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits. This irradiation process may be able to be altered slightly by removing protactinium-233. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual purpose fuel. [1]
It's a 1MW reactor. That's a thousand times smaller than conventional nuclear reactors. It doesn't seem unlikely that it could be passively cooled.
For the rest, a great source is the book Plentiful Energy, by the chief scientists of another small fast-reactor project at Argonne. For that reactor, the fuel is a mix of plutonium isotopes which can't be used for bombs and are much more difficult to purify than natural uranium ore. The waste goes back to the radioactivity of the original ore in a couple centuries.
This is one of the great challenges nuclear has to overcome on paper. Most of these costs are based on absurd standards that have consistently been proven wrong. Fukushima's cleanup would be orders of magnitude less if they didn't have to treat nearby soil as waste when its radioactive signature is far lower than the soil found at the ski slopes in CO, and even less than beach sand in Brazil. We treat low level radiation as dangerous, it really isn't. Nobody at Fukushima was exposed to high level radiation, and no one will die early due to the exposures they had. And if everybody moved back to the town and land that was evacuated, they could live their whole lives out and be fine! Why waste money on cleaning up things that are not dangerous, just lied about? Changing the standards to actually reflect science would eliminate so many of these "nebulous" costs and perceived indirect costs of nuclear power.
"However the latest study, (Zablotska et al, 2013) is very large (over 110,000 workers) and succeeded in finding statistically significant leukemia increases, even at the relatively low doses experienced by most of these adult workers (average dose = 92 mSv)."
Also, AGR fuel needs to be condensed or reprocessed shortly after discharge. It's great in a gas reactor, not so much in a spent fuel pool. That means much of the UK's discharged fuel as been consolidated at Sellafield. But all that plutonium is a great fuel resource. Jealous of whoever gets to fuel their reactor with that goldmine.
So distribute fission and fusion, overcomes much of that. And distributed solar and wind needs backup which is usually fairly centralized. Unless you want to spend 3-5 times as much for your energy to buy batteries.
Fusion needs to be distributed well away from population centres. Until we've had enough contained failures of the "intrinsically safe" reactors to be convinced that it's actually true.
From what I can gather it's solid state in the sense that it's a passive system that doesn't require pumps but it still involves heat creating steam which in turn drives generators. The liquid changes phase from liquid to gas then cools to a liquid again, so it can remain self-contained.
Very cool, but feels kinda not as solid if you know what I mean. Don't want to downplay how neat it is though.
Safe = reliable = high capacity factor = revenue. Look at the INPO and NRC ratings of plant safety and economic performance. They are directly correlated. So it's in every nuclear startup's best interest to be very safe.
