Why can't we construct our powerplants within enormous lead hangers to contain and mitigate the effects of a nuclear...

Not just lead dude. It had to be multi layered:
Concrete, lead, uranium, lead, concrete.

Uranium is a way better shielding than lead. And it's just an alpha emitter, and not even that active at all

>probably not
Have to get your jab in eh?

Okay, so preventation is historically priven to be infeasible. Our next step to making juclear power a reality is to react to it's risks.

Very good points on the lead being a stupid idea, however wouldn't underground facilities lined with conrete be even better than the staus quo?
Please insult my intelligence more, its very progressive.

And damn, that's hot as fuck. Do you think it could melt steel beams?

You are reading to much superman comics. There's nothing about lead that makes it better for radiation shielding than concrete. It is in fact worse, as building so much lead would lead to poisoning of the environment, inevitably.

Damn I had no idea, that's interesting. Other posters said that lead has much too low a melting point. But maybe if it was large enough (and thus far enough away from the reactor core) it wouldnt have that problem.

Very valid, forget the fucking lead. What material could we house entire facilities in? I want to reduce fallout to 0

The only instances of complete meltdowns in history happened in buildings with no containment structure at all (i.e. in places not in the US)

I'm not sure you appreciate just how ridiculously strong those structures are

The greatest danger is always from corium melting though concrete layers below the reactor, not from anything above it.

the problem with previous meltdowns is that the buildings just had cheap sheet metal roofs

it's relatively easy to reduce gamma radiation to below background levels with giant layers of concrete

also, "fallout" is purely a product from nuclear weapons

You're confusing radiation shielding with containment. They're two different tasks.

Concrete. It's cheap, safe, and hard for material to penetrate.

>literally thought you were saying 'we do' to understanding, not building structures. Apologies.

Fallout can travel half the continent it's on relatively quickly. My solution would contain any fallout from a meltdown in an underground facility.

Therefore normies can stop being afriad of nuclear power and we can get on with life

>to BETTER insulate from radiation.

Do some research as to how badly radiation emanates in nuclear meltdowns. The only two real cases in which there was significant harm is some island in the us and Chernobyl which were both the cause of precautions being at a far lower level than we have currently. And they were below safety levels of even the time they existed, let alone todays standards. That info is public information, i wont search it out for you.

TL;DR if you did your own research instead of fishing for answers from a bunch of Veeky Forums lurkers you'd find that the harm is incredibly minimal.

But sure, if you want you're welcome to perpetuate incorrect myths about the potential harm of nuclear energy, be my guest.

8/10 bait

>My solution would contain any fallout from a meltdown

Welcome to reality, nothing is absolute. That is like saying you want to feel no gravity. You're welcome to decide exactly how far an infinite distance from an object with mass is. But in reality there is no concrete definition. Radiation leaking due to a meltdown isn't quantized simply or readily. There are multiple radii of harm at different amounts. More or less protection merely moves these distances, it doesnt get rid of it all-together.

From how're you're asking id recommend starting with an AP physics high school textbook to fill you in on the basics.

Thanks for a reply with substance at least, will do more research

It's unfortunate that I need to qualify and quantify my proposed solution to such a degree that you can't even interpret it to mean the obvious.

I realize that reducing the effect of a nuclear meltdown to 0 is impossible. The number itself doesn't even fucking refer to a unit, so 7/10 for making me respond.

3/10 for trying this hard.

You people need to focus less on the OP and more on the topic, I shouldn't even need to say this. Even if OP is a dipshit you're just wasting everybody's time by telling him to go research etc. Why are you on this board when you could be researching your own topics? Why the fuck does anyone post here when they could just do research?

lol you guys have an inferiorty compelx methinks

>The number itself doesn't even fucking refer to a unit

I hate to break it to you but science doesnt work with "the obvious"

It works with defined expectations relating to widely accepted units.

Nobody know what the fuck you mean by "the obvious"

It isnt obvious. Are you trying to prevent anyone from having their life reduce by 20 years, 10 years, 10 minutes, half a second?

Yes it seems silly, but no one can read your mind. If you want a clear answer you need to provide a clear question. And no one will read your mind well enough to "know the obvious" as it is in your head.

>lol you guys have an inferiorty compelx methinks

Pot calling the kettle black

>Why the fuck does anyone post here when they could just do research?

Because i like to bitch at people anonymously. Why else would i be on Veeky Forums? I dont think anyone ser

>the topic

The problem is that there is no topic. There are hundreds of scientists in the field of nuclear energy actively researching how to mitigate fallout harms. And it isnt merely adding more lead to each plant.

More importantly the harm caused by nuclear energy is 99% in the storage of spent fuel. The reactors themselves are laugable in terms of potential harm as compared to active harm storing nuclear waste causes.

So ultimately, why the fuck is OP not more concerned about nuclear waste storage?

It is like posting about how to reduce plane crashes when we all know you're more likely to die in the car ride to the airport.

Are you fucking with me right now?

Im an engineer and I know for a fact that anybody who isn't overwhelmingly autistic would understand that a proposed solution would do it's best toitigate a defined undesired issue.
You really want me to quantify this shit over Veeky Forums, or can we go back to doscussing better ideas for nuclear energy risk mitigation?

Inb4 you come back with something even more autistic Newton-incarnate

Blow steam about science all you want. Unless you're out there trying to make a difference, you're no better than a herione addict

Just stop.

And yet another comment that contributes nothing

You can't actually be serious to refuse to partake in a theoretical discussion because the OP hasn't provided EXACTLY the outcome?

Im cringing in my pantaloons

>better ideas for nuclear energy risk mitigation?

Then fuck containment, fallouts from reactors are of a statistically insignificant concern, let's talk about the real issue, storage of spent nuclear material. Everything else pales into comparison in terms of harm.

Where and how should we store spent nuclear materials?

Nuclear moon base

>Nuclear moon base

I was so tilted a moment ago, and now i am so much in agreement.

Lead would be worse than concrete because it costs more per kilogram.

ay OP

this is meh:Ultimately Veeky Forums and Veeky Forums especially is full of a bunch of autists (me included). So unless you define this problem as being in a perfect world with unlimited resources, we are going to assume you mean real life. And yes, we are going to be anal nitpicking assholes about it.

So unless a clear context and definitions are given, we're going to try and out smart-ass you to our dying breath.

Such is life.

Tbh is nuclear waste storage really that hard?
The things that happen are stuff like contaminated water but that's because the waste was just shoved into an old saltmine or something like that.
Can't you just build a facility somewhere in nowhere like those inactive airports for old military planes? (I guess you can't really do that in some European countries as they are more tightly populated but it's definetly possible in the US). There is a lot of space on earth.

Did you go smoke some weed or something? Your attitude is miles apart from what it was

Also me:Case and point:
>Because i like to bitch at people anonymously.

Im pretty reasonable, but i do like to rant.

>Can't you just build a facility somewhere

I agree, you can just put somewhere. But that shizz has to be somewhere for thousands of years. Plus, we (and by we i mean america) tends to put nuclear waste facilities near poorer populations or Native americans which merely opens up another can of geopolitical worms.

And im on edge mostly because i spent all day teaching science and my patience is running thin. Plus the Veeky Forums culture is to irreverently bitch at people, and i find it quite calming..

Also consider that even stored materials leak radiation into the atmosphere, dirt, etc.. What about more proper containment facilities for nuclear waste?

Or a way to handle waste in a more productive way? Idk im just spitballing.

>thousands of years
come on, If we can't manage to throw a couple kilotonnes of material into deep space or the sun within a thousand years we should off ourselves as a species right now.
Also "proper" containment facilities is what I meant with storing it. I dont know either why that isnt done. too expensive probably

most power plants are really well shielded

except some idiot workers drill holes in the containment

in the Swiss power-plant near the German border
workers drilled holes in the inner containment to put fire extinguishers on the wall
no one noticed for 6 years
aargauerzeitung.ch/aargau/zurzach/akw-leibstadt-loecher-in-reaktorhuelle-blieben-sechs-jahre-lang-unbemerkt-128163967

All the crap that is actually radioactive in any relevant way is only radioactive up to a century after which they become useful materials. All that stuff that lasts for thousands for years is so weak it's not an issue.

Maybe you should educate yourself on nuclear energy before speaking again. We don't exist to baby you. Do some fucking research.

The risk is already less than 1 in 10m core damage events per reactor year, and a core damage even doesn't mean radiation escapes.

There is no need to discuss risk mitigation and more so when you clearly have no clue what you're talking.

And lol at you claiming to be an engineer.

It's not hard from an engineering perspective. The problem is instead very politically difficult.

Given the wall is 2 or 3 metres of reinforced concrete there really was no issue with drilling a couple centimetres to affix a fire extinguisher. It's just the media making an issue out of nothing.

Bump

>there was significant harm is some island in the us
Do you mean Three Mile Island? As far as I know there wasn't significant harm from that meltdown because the response was very good and everything went right after the meltdown. The successful handling of the crisis was one of the contributing factors that propelled Jimmy Carter from governor to president.

Also it isn't really "some island". It's a strip of land in the middle of the river, it is an island but calling it "some island" conjures up the South Pacific but that's me.

Actually this. It would be expensive as fuck but we could build reactors and solar arrays on the moon and beam energy back to earth.
But until we have a starport, were not doing shit in space. Its far more economic to just research cold fission.

Either start talking like a human being or get the fuck out of my thread. Nobody enjoys talking to you no matter what you add here and nobody wants to take your ideas into consideration, just because you talk like you're just looking up synonyms that are more than 3 syllables long to every fucking word you use.

Inb4 "I don't care what people think of me"

Well you need to ensure that your rockets will not explode and deposit nuclear waste down on Earth. Also beaming energy back to Earth?

Maybe a thousand years from now well have the energy to send even our regular waste into space.
But im betting that we are not going to get to that point without a shitton of problems. Consider how quickly (relativily) regimes change. We cant be sure that the US will be around 2 generations from now. Corporation, rebel factions, dictators, etc. are going to have to care for the waste and theres no garuntee that they will be capable of doing so.

Look up a Space-based solar power (SBSP). We could use microwaves or lazers to transmit energy back to earth with 60% efficiency (which is decent).
I dont think we should send nuclear waste into space the idea is to have the plants ON the moon. Along with a solar farm and a moon base.

pretty sure OPs gone. At least the thread is much better than it was

Three Mile Island affected basically nothing outside of the reactor core and its concrete containment vessel.

The core melted down into the big concrete bowl that was built underneath it for exactly that contingency. A sensor outside the reactor building *might* have caught a whiff of radiation for half a second, but it was so small that it might well have been a (common) false alarm.

Ever since then, the containment vessel has been off limits, because to set foot in it is to die a very certain and painful death. Outside the reactor vessel, nothing has changed in the last fifty years.

tl;dr US reactor designers in the 1950s weren't incompetent morons.

In large pools of water until they can be burned more completely in a newer type of reactor.

Remember, to reduce gamma radiation to a level that has no impact on human health, you need one of the following:

1" of lead
1' of reinforced concrete
3' of packed earth
8' of water
half a mile or so of air? I'm not totally certain of this last part, it's not really something I've researched.

So, whereas a swimming pool located upstairs that requires active pumping to keep the spent rods from flashing the swimming pool into steam is a BAD IDEA, the lake-sized cooling ponds used in the US are more than adequate for the task.

And we really should be burning up the rest of the fuel to begin with, rather than throwing it away just because the concentration of U-235 dropped back below 5%.