Velund
3 May 2010
News / Nuclear Power in Poland? Yes, please! Absolutely nobody disagrees! [73]
Believe me, it cannot be considered reasonable alternative, at least in foreseeable future. Are you ready to pay, say, $12 per kw/h? Are you ready to live near semiconductor factory with some really not nice substances used in process (like arsine, phosphine)?
I think that subcritical reactors will be safe enough even for paranoids. ;) Especially underground variants with 100-150m of natural radiation shield above it. ;) 20-40 years of operation on a single fuel load, then 100-150 years of "cooling" to let highly active nucleides to decay, then spent fuel removal and reprocessing.
If we talking about thorium fuel cycle, we can even afford to use fresh thorium each time and just store spent fuel in a safe place (some orbit out of ecliptic plane may be such safe place - for millions of years if necessary, and relatively accessible if humans will ever need to extract something valuable from those spent fuel).
Well at least there are some reasonable alternatives.
Believe me, it cannot be considered reasonable alternative, at least in foreseeable future. Are you ready to pay, say, $12 per kw/h? Are you ready to live near semiconductor factory with some really not nice substances used in process (like arsine, phosphine)?
I think that subcritical reactors will be safe enough even for paranoids. ;) Especially underground variants with 100-150m of natural radiation shield above it. ;) 20-40 years of operation on a single fuel load, then 100-150 years of "cooling" to let highly active nucleides to decay, then spent fuel removal and reprocessing.
If we talking about thorium fuel cycle, we can even afford to use fresh thorium each time and just store spent fuel in a safe place (some orbit out of ecliptic plane may be such safe place - for millions of years if necessary, and relatively accessible if humans will ever need to extract something valuable from those spent fuel).