Player2 said:
The problem with safety is that it costs money. What they do is look at the events that happened the last x years and then make a plant that will resist those. If something "bigger" happens... well, you saw what happened in Fukushima. However, Kasz is right. The effects of nuclear meltdowns aren't that bad. Accidents in chemical plants are usually more dangerous and nobody cares about those. (I'm not saying that we shouldn't care about nuclear accidents, though). @Kynes: No fissible Thorium isotopes can be found in nature. However, Th-232 can absorb slow neutrons like U-238, then beta minus decay into Uranium 233 which is fissible, but you need a source of neutrons to do so. A fuel rod composed only of Th-232 won't work, just like a rod composed only of U-238 doesn't. |
Of course, but that doesn't mean we can't use it in much cheaper and much more secure reactors. We have tons of neutron sources usable to transmute Thorium and create the fissible Uranium, and that non fissible by itself property is what makes it much more secure, as it can't sustain by itself the reaction, so the risk of a meltdown disappears.
