The nuclear energy technology that we currently use are solid fuel, liquid water technologies. Because water boils at 100 degrees celsius at atmospheric pressures, it has to be kept under pressure to allow the heat necessary for the turbines so the reactor is a pressure vessel ready to explode which is what happened at Fukishima, it wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was a steam explosion followed by a hydrogen explosions as steam under that much pressure and heat disassociates into hydrogen and oxygen. Being a nuclear fuel, the transmutations that occurs in the fuel rods causes cracks and deformations to occur so the fuel rods need to be reprocessed after only 0.5% of the energy has been extracted but the Carter administration canceled the reprocessing plant so the "spent" fuel rods are now nuclear waste which must be kept for hundreds of thousands of years before they are safe. However the uranium cycle produces weapons grade plutonium so the military put money into the technology and the solid fuel rods have to be safety tested and approved so they can only be purchased from the manufacturer of the nuclear plant, they are the profitable inkjet cartridges of the nuclear industry.
The competing technology which was tested and worked well was Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors ( LFTR ). Thorium is orders of magnitude more plentiful than Uranium, we simply can not run out of Thorium, it's literally common rock. As a liquid salt reactor, it's under atmospheric pressure so it can't blow up. As a liquid salt reactor, it's already molten so melt downs are not a problem. As a liquid salt reactor leaks seal themselves. As a liquid salt reactor a freeze plug means that any interruption to cooling power results in a safe shutdown without any additional power. Fukishima imply could not have happened with LFTR. An LFTR recycles the fuel onsite so over 99% of the fuel is used, existing nuclear wastes can be consumed by the reactor and what little waste there is ( 1/10,000 of a conventional reactor ), only needs to be stored for 300 years. The LFTR received some funding when the airforce wanted an atomic plane as it's the only nuclear reactor compact, light and reliable enough for an airplane but missile technology soon overshadowed the idea of a plane so only the stationary test reactor was built but it ran successfully for years and was shut off every weekend just by shutting off the cooling power ( they didn't have money for weekend operations ). The other hindrance to funding was that the LFTR does not need physical fuel rods, it just needs hunks of Thorium which are easy to refine, no isotope refinement needed. Consequently the builders of the nuclear reactors could not profit from selling fuel so GE and the other companies didn't want to fund the technology.
If we continue to use our existing technology which is designed for weapons and profit then yes we are endangering ourselves and future generations. Had we chosen the LFTR in the 60's, we would already have been in a world where electricity was free and there were no pollution.
There's no sensible alternative. Burning coal for electricity is dirty and emits a lot of CO2 (especially older power stations). Wind energy is unreliable, ruins the landscape and needs gas backup anyway. Base load gas (i.e. not trying to even out wind farm output) is OK, but gas supplies are finite and we need it for heating. Renewables are limited in capacity (eg hydro, wind, solar) and/or need lots of development and investment (eg tidal). Maybe one day we can use solar power from space or the Sahara, but that would need huge developments in materials, transmission lines and global politics.
Nuclear power is complex but bear in mind that the current UK nuclear stations were designed in the 1950s and 60s and are still safely producing clean power. In the 21st century it should be possible to do this even more efficiently and safely, and address concerns about low level waste etc.
Nuclear power is the only way combat global warming while keeping the lights on. You can't get much more ethical than that.
dk
give up on life...
Is it worth it and is it justifiable for the possibilty of ruining future generations?
