- #106
Andrew Mason
Science Advisor
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I'm not sure about your "millions" if not "billions" of years. The fuel consumption of a faster breeder reactor, assuming it can reprocess and eventually use all of its Uranium fuel, is about 1/100th that of current light water reactors. So you seem to be saying that nuclear power using current reactors would work for 10,000 to 10,000,000 years.Evanish said:The breeder reactors that we can be built today are good enough in my opinion sodium coolant and all. We should start building them now. We likely won't, but we should in my opinion. In the long run breeder reactors could power civilization for millions if not billions of years. That seems long term enough to me. I've spent a good number of years reading about this subject. It has not left me with much confidence in wind and solar. I'd feel much safer if we were building nuclear instead, but I seem to be outvoted (in western society at least) so I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I am a bit curious why you think decommissioning is such a big issue.
Decommissioning is a problem for sustainability. It is very expensive and difficult to dismantle and safely keep the core materials isolated from living creatures for the few thousand years that is required. You end up having to encase everything in concrete and seal off the site forever. We don't know all the details of decommissioning most of the current nuclear plants let alone the cost and feasibility of decommissioning one 50 years from now.
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