this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2024
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Science Memes

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nuclear (mander.xyz)
submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

fair argument

I want to add something to it:

First of all, a lot of that uranium seems to have been there and slowly decaying for a long time. I think, what we humans did was to "wake it up" and turn it into some more violently-reacting other elements, for the sake that we get the energy out of it at an acceptable pace. Now, though, it's severely more dangerous than it was before.

Also, I've an idea about what to do with the waste: Since the waste tends to activate itself due to neutron activation, put a lot of it (but just barely not enough to make a bomb) together and it will activate itself to react violently at very high speeds, but just barely not fast enough to explode (make a bomb). That way, you can get a lot of heat out of it rather quickly, and are left with burned-out material (which contains less radioactive potential).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

First of all, a lot of that uranium seems to have been there and slowly decaying for a long time. I think, what we humans did was to “wake it up” and turn it into some more violently-reacting other elements, for the sake that we get the energy out of it at an acceptable pace. Now, though, it’s severely more dangerous than it was before.

it's weird, but it's not "more violent" it's just more energetic. Either through enrichment, making it more potent, which is an industry standard across the entire western world. Or through making fertile material, like uranium 238, fissile by going through the decay chain until it becomes something more spicy, like pu 239 or whatever.

The big problem is that the energy it releases is definitionally incompatible to human life. That's the ONLY problem.

oh and btw, nuclear reactors are physically incapable of "going critical" it's physically impossible. 90% of the concern is it breaking containment from being really fucking hot, which is notably, really hard to deal with.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Or through making fertile material, like uranium 238, fissile by going through the decay chain until it becomes something more spicy, like pu 239 or whatever.

Yeah that's what i meant.