How Government Screwed Up Nuclear Energy: Pandora's Promise (Doc)

[dannno]

I'm only a little ways into this and here is what I've learned so far:

The government funded, subsidized and regulated the wrong kind of nuclear reactor which generates exponentially more nuclear waste and thus is exponentially more dangerous to the public. It was initially based on the decision of a military general working for the government for the sake of expediency on a particular project. Entrenching that technology into the industry has plagued it ever since. We then exported that technology all over the world.

If a free market that respected property rights had been allowed to create nuclear energy, they would have, according to the pioneers of the technology who built the first nuclear reactor, chosen the other type of reactor for commercial use which is far less dangerous and wasteful. These scientists did not anticipate the amount of waste that would be created.

What I already knew about nuclear energy:

The government regulates and subsidizes nuclear energy to the benefit of the industry, not to limit it. Sure, some safety regulations exist, but more regulations that limit the liability and subsidize the industry and the waste end up making it worse. In a real free market, nuclear plants would need to be fully insured to protect the owners from direct liability. They would insure themselves and the insurance companies would regulate the plants and ensure safety to avoid large payouts in case of a disaster. Nuclear plants would be smaller scale operations that were much safer and in areas that would create less impact. That is how they were originally envisioned by some of the creators of the first plant. All of that on top of being exponentially less wasteful. Nuclear plants were initially scaled up as directed by the large energy companies who had limited liability granted to them by government. Government does NOT make nuclear power SAFE, that is a complete myth, debunked,

[GunnyFreedom]

I've known about LFT reactors for a while, as well as the bizarre history that pushed Uranium reactors over Thorium. LFT Reactors are not quite an energy panacea, but they may share a zip code.

[dannno]

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[dannno]

Ugh, so I watched some more and kinda disappointing that they use man made global warming as part of their argument, but the stuff on nuclear is still good - still haven't reached the end.

[GunnyFreedom]

The reliance on the far more dangerous and inefficient and inferior Uranium/Plutonium reactors, as I recall, comes from the ability of a Uranium reactor to be 'tweaked' to produce weapons grade Plutonium, while the far safer, more efficient, and superior Liquid Fluoride Thorium (LFT) reactors are FAR more difficult (but, if I recall correctly, still theoretically possible) to use for that purpose.

So we are using a technology that doesn't work as well, costs 1000 fold more, and is stupendously dangerous to the planet, because the safe cheap and efficient tech doesn't help enough to produce nuclear bombs.

In full disclosure I have not seen the video, I've just been semi-obsessed with LFT reactors for some 5 years now.

[dannno]

The reliance on the far more dangerous and inefficient and inferior Uranium/Plutonium reactors, as I recall, comes from the ability of a Uranium reactor to be 'tweaked' to produce weapons grade Plutonium, while the far safer, more efficient, and superior Liquid Fluoride Thorium (LFT) reactors are FAR more difficult (but, if I recall correctly, still theoretically possible) to use for that purpose.

So we are using a technology that doesn't work as well, costs 1000 fold more, and is stupendously dangerous to the planet, because the safe cheap and efficient tech doesn't help enough to produce nuclear bombs.

In full disclosure I have not seen the video, I've just been semi-obsessed with LFT reactors for some 5 years now.

Ya LFT was demonstrated in the mid-80s and congress dock-blocked them, but I was referring to back in the 40s, even the original nuclear plants that they made were the wrong kind.

Chernobyl was made to produce plutonium or whatever isotope it was to make bombs, it had ZERO containment. On top of that, there were very few deaths of workers and clean up crew, no deaths from the surrounding population and people actually went back to Chernobyl to live anyway and they still live there to this day... Why is that never talked about? I mean, they went there and interviewed these people who had been living there for decades...

It's amazing to think what the free market could have done with nuclear energy, we could all be living off nuclear energy pretty safely I think. The waste is barely even an issue anymore, the only waste the LFT generates is only dangerous for 800 years... and that is 30+ year old technology, imagine what could have been developed if it was allowed to.. even then the dangers from radiation seem to be really exaggerated, there is plenty of radiation everywhere and even more in high altitudes - if you go on an airplane it's like 20 times the amount at sea level.

[dannno]

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