the message I’m getting is that states are becoming more interested in deploying uranium powered generating stations, not that it’s going to “cost more at the pump”
I guess you’ve never heard of the beach with sand that is more radioactive than Fukushima and has been since long before nuclear energy or even nuclear weapons. People go there because the black sand is pretty and because it doesn’t have enough ionizing (cancerous) radiation to hurt anyone, it’s actually really popular.
Not all nuclear power plants are equal. Fukushima barely reached “level 8” on the danger level of nuclear accidents, which is the catch-all “really bad and off the charts” level. Even though Chernobyl was also “off the charts”, the soviet nuclear program was also focused on using power plants to make weapon’s grade plutonium and their design was flawed severely, so Chernobyl was and still is much, much worse.
Three Mile Island was a maintenance issue, and Fukushima was due to catastrophic damage, so what if we could build a nuclear plant that relied on something other than technology to prevent a meltdown?
Simple, gravity. Trains used to crash into disconnected carriages from other trains whose engineers never realized a coupler broke. Now, when a train starts, there’s pressurized air in a hose running the length of a train and when it fails the air is released; that was the only thing keeping the brakes on every car _de_activated. So the train immediately comes to a halt. That’s what an actual failsafe is, but nuclear plants currently in operation don’t have that because they were built in the 1950s and 60s on the cheap.
Instead of air, an electromagnet in a NEW design keeps a seal at the bottom of the plant closed. If the electricity fails, the seal is opened by gravity. When the seal is open, the nuclear fuel is sent dropping into a cooling tank with enough water to keep them cooled off for 100 or more years, during a mere few months of which we can repair the minimal damage easily. Unfortunately, the design was held back for decades for numerous nontechnical reasons, and now the average person is too fucking terrified of past failures based on the lies of businessmen and the shortsightedness of Cold War paranoia to use something that actually works.
Sure. But the price of uranium is the concern of the nuclear power plant, not mine… as it will most certainly not impact my price, should it become cheaper.
Civilian here. There are companies that mine, store, transport and broker uranium. These companies employe people with different skill sets from physical labor all the way up to management. An increase in price may lead to an increased level of employment by these companies, thereby increasing the number of jobs, and play a role in impacting the economy at large. It makes sense for this kind of news to be filed in the business section, even if it doesn’t directly affect most of our day to day.
I’ll tell you who it won’t benefit, Africans ruled by oligarchs who continue to screw them - and Westerners, Russians and Chinese who see it as a big ol’ fat juicy peach just a’ hangin’ out…
Unfortunately. Gamed from the inside, gamed from the outside. The defeatist mentality, the feudalism, foreign interests taking advantage, it all comes together as the most desperate condition in the entire world.
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