nuclear energy

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'Ya canna change the laws o' physics,
Laws o' physics,
Laws o' physics;
Ya canna change the laws o' physics,
Laws o' physics, Jim!'

Even the dubious science of Star Trek got it right.

In terms of uranium, I know that the US accounts for only a couple percent of the world's output, but between Canada and Australia you have 50% of the world's output right there.

Yep and we should leave it in the bloody ground. Australians in general would not accept nuclear power, but we are happy to export uranium. Its really hypocritical.

Uh... Nuclear remediation is a different thing, okay? It was discontinued due to, simply, being impossible. As for the new research, don't bite my head off if you don't believe it. Learn Flemish and german, then make a judgment. It seems scientifically sound; but it's a new, ongoing set of research, we won't know more until 2012.
Personally, I don't care how long things remain radioactive. Boo hoo. But, as others see nuclear=evil , anything to allow nuclear projects to move ahead is fine by me. So long as nobody screws up.

Bingo there's the problem. They do screw up on a relatively regular basis and nuclear screw ups have the potential to render large parts of the planet uninhabitable and the rest poisoned

Nah...never happen:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1 ... 64,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... y.politics

http://www.neis.org/Nuke%20News/Clippin ... 6151832506

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=nuc ... -of-degree

http://www.allbusiness.com/government/g ... 164-1.html

http://www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS ... overy.html

http://a4nr.org/library/failures/07.31. ... ergyblogs/

http://www.ccnr.org/browns_ferry.html

http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html

and of course:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

here's one from my own back yard:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-colle ... 05166.html

Granted, those are all evidences of problems that may repeat. But, no progress without risk.
Coal supplies are dwindling, oil too. If someone has a viable way to supply power for almost seven billion people through solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power alone, given current technology, I'd be open to hearing it. Otherwise... Unless we decide to kill off the populations of India and China, there's not much else to do.

just burry it, put a school on it, there

There is plenty of yellow-cake ore in Canada.

ruveyn

Maybe we should stop wasting money on unprovable sciences(Theoretical Physics main culprit) and shovel the money into applied sciences and get a workable fision reactor already

quantum theory makes your computer possible. Quantum physics is positively essential to any applied solid state or electronic applications. Classical physics simply cannot explain them. Classical physics cannot ever account for stable atoms.

The problem with fusion is that we do not have a technology for containing a very hot plasma for long enough to get useful amounts of energy out of a fusion reaction. We know fusion works, but the only two working instances are:

1. hydrogen bombs
2. stars, which are crunched by a strong gravitational field

ruveyn

I would be more inclined to think we would have such a reactor if a somestyled manhatten(sp?) project for it were made, it would takes a few years at most. Wasting money on theory based upon a thoery upon a theory gets us no where in the short term. Why not do what we can exploit right now, and worry about the other stuff when we have built up the technology to prove or disprove it properly.

For example we were exploiting electricity as a power source, and other forms of magnetism without knowing much about the processes involved. The rest was developed later when it was usable.

A couple of years ago there was talk of building an experimental (fusion) tokamak. Anybody know what happened to that?

There are many tokamaks currently in operation, including 1 in the USA from within the last 10 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak#Cu ... _operation

And not a single one can produce sustained power that is of any practical use.

ruveyn