Nuclear Energy or Atomic Energy the coolest technology ever invented or developed, especially given good worldwide diffusion of this badly needed carbon free energy technology that can help solve climate change & reduce air pollution worldwide, providing empowering of emerging electric vehicles like the Tesla Model 3 with carbon free electricity!
Simple
Radioactive elements assembled into a core produce heat with a sustained reaction, heat extracted from the core produces steam to drive power generating turbines to make electricity for the reactor operation & for export to grids & utility customers.
Complexity
Fission reactors make heat by splitting radioactive elements like uranium in a chain reaction driven by neutron collisions with radioactive elements. The complex fuel cycle exacerbated by the daughter products of fissile elements splitting apart into a series of unstable isotopes, some of which are neutron poisons that hinder the reactor while others produces gases & liquids & have different neutron cross sections & give off alpha & beta & gamma radiation that continues interacting with all the newly formed elements. Supercomputer simulation needed to even perform basic fuel analytics given vast complexity of physical energetic interactions & transmutation of elements happening in the fuel pebbles, rods or core of the reactor.
Government
Nearly all of the 450+ fission reactors operating worldwide were paid for by government funding because of the long build times & huge budgets of large second generation fission reactors. Requiring huge swaths of land for safety offsets & incredibly complex construction, many of these reactors cost in excess of $10 billion & can take more than 10 years to build from breaking ground to going critical & exporting electricity to grid customers
New Gen 4 Technology
Fast reactors that breed nuclear fuel elements with over parity, making more fuel then they consume by exploiting in core enrichment of fertile elements like thorium to burnable fissle elements the core can utilize to make heat energy. Liquid metal cooled, molten salt & high temperature gas cooled reactors, there's something for all customers scaling from 3kw thermal 1kw electrical to many gigawatts with MMRs & SMR's & Big Gen 3 & Gen 4 reactors
Decarbonization of Energy
We need a renewable way to charge electric vehicles when the sun's not shining & the winds not blowing as those renewables have poor capacity factor (not making energy when customers using it) & have poor capacity scaling (cannot throttle output on demand) so something more stable & abundant needed for base load capacity that can scale & follow loads & produce many KW or MW or GW of output. Nuclear fission reactors provide this amazing capacity & can be paired with geothermal & tidal & hydro energy systems to provide the grid with robust base load capacity 24/7 uptime with pumped hydro providing the big energy storage scale needed to balance the grid dynamically.
Carbon Combustion Pollution
When hydrocarbons or carbon energy sources are burned toxic pollutants are emitted in the exhaust stream made of fumes & particles. In automobiles a combination of emissions controls like EGR & 3-way Cat helped to radically reduce tailpipe emissions. Soot bagging systems & DPF similarly help to clean up exhaust of coal power plants & Diesel engines. Air pollution a serious public health & environmental problem because of how those pollutants sicken people & animals in nature with preventable diseases by damaging the respiratory system & brain with toxic pollutants, some of which cause cancers & neuro-cognitive deficits , long ago proven by leaded gasoline impact studies. Coal power in particular releases a lot of naturally occurring radioactive metals & metal oxides & are the leading source of radioactive pollution right in line with Radon 222. Yes coal power release more radioactive pollution than Nuclear Reactors, even when you include the mining impacts of producing the nuclear fuels & the manufacturing of nuclear fuel elements, rods, pebbles & fuel bundles etc
Urgent Need to Address Climate Change
With nearly 8 billion people alive at the same time & global development accelerating entropy & chaos in the biosphere of Earth, we need a mix of renewable energy sources to replace carbon energy. Carbon energy a one way ticket to runaway climate change disaster that can make life on Earth much worse progressively for future generations who would needlessly suffer from our lack of focus to address climate change with nuclear reactors & other renewables now!
Ending Nuclear Waste
Gen 4 reactors produce only short live waste & burn up actinides as fuel, greatly reducing nuclear waste generation problem. Fuel reprocessing the equivalent of recycling spent nuclear fuels makes the fuel cycle renewable, especially when breeder reactors are utilized to enrich or active fertile elements like thorium. Reduction in radioactive waste production lowers long term operating costs & burdens to public & environmental health
Greater Core Efficiency
Just like newer cars being cleaner & more efficient that cars from the 1960's, newer nuclear technology more like the Tesla Model 3, leveraging decades of scientific & technical research & applying that technology. Some newer reactors can utilize 95% of the fuel elements potential energy while common Gen 2 reactor can only use about 4% of the fuels energy. Think 10mpg carburetor car from the 1950s verses 100+ MPGe of a modern electric vehicle like the Tesla Model 3 recharged with renewable energy //
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