And the Dolphin, being an intelligent being after all, used that money quite wisely.
Nuclear power and advanced tech. The good, the bad, and the mentally unstable (aka the USSR).
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And the Dolphin, being an intelligent being after all, used that money quite wisely.
He spent it on suing Greenpeace. An excellent choice.
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Where would such a place acquire even just 3.8 million euros.... My mind is baffled.
It was an accident.
Someone wanted to buy green peas for 3.8 million.
He is still regretting this.
Ah, I suspect green peas would have a collective IQ higher than green peace too, Probably enough to understand simple math.
And also probably enough to tell the difference between a dolphin and a human.
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They most definitely do.
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Getting back on topic of nuclear power...
You know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why there haven't been more MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) production.
Let's face it, this is a reactor that is impossible to cause to melt down. The ice plug will function as long as gravity is 9.81 Ms^2 at sea level and ice melts into water at 0C (32F). The absolute worst case that can happen is it will drain the molten salts into the containment tank that cancels the reaction and causes the salts to solidify, contained and ready to be extracted. It'll be a royal pain to extract it since it'll pretty much solidify into a block of metal salts, but it sure beats a Chernobyl event. Even if you bomb the reactor and cause a containment breach mid-cycle, the worst that will happen is you'll have a flash fire as the heat escapes and the salts solidify, producing no radioactive gas or particulates.
Even better, you can run it off of the nuclear waste already present, and it consumes 99% of the fissionable materials provided. Meaning not only does it not produce radioactive waste (you keep running it until it produces inert byproducts), it can actually be used to solve our radioactive waste problem!
They don't produce as much power per reactor as a light water or heavy water reactor, but they are also smaller and far safer so you can spam them. A more decentralized energy grid is probably a better thing anyway, as it provides a redundancy and resistance to service disruption if any single reactor or cluster of reactors go down.
The only downside is the initial investment cost of around 1.7 Billion USD. Which is steep, particularly when compared against natural gas or coal plants. However, once amortize that over the lifespan of the reactor, even factoring in operating, maintenance, and fuel costs, it's about a quarter of the price per GW/h of anything else on the market.
Want more? How about both solving CO2 problems AND dependence on foreign oil for transportation fuel at the same time? MSR's operate at high enough temperatures that they can be used as a desalination plant while still producing power (which is tremendously useful in its own right, even if it wasn't generating power), AND they can actually split the carbon and oxygen and hydrogen off from CO2 and water vapour, and make hydrocarbon chains. For those not familiar with biochemistry, this basically means you can create anything inding in -ane or -ol. Like, say, octane. And do so as a BY-PRODUCT of producing power, meaning it is an economically viable supply of gasoline. So you can pipe all that nasty CO2 gas that everyone is so worried about straight on over and convert it into gasoline.
So what is stopping it from being made? The nuclear boogyman, greenpeace being derps, and the initial price tag. Corporations don't want to do something new without first having some guarantees that it is going to pay off. Governments are run by special interest groups, and greenpeace has some pretty deep pockets. But hopefully even that isn't going to keep this from becoming a viable energy source in the future.
You know, the more I think about it, the more I wonder why there haven't been more MSR (Molten Salt Reactor) production.
Let's face it, this is a reactor that is impossible to cause to melt down. The ice plug will function as long as gravity is 9.81 Ms^2 at sea level and ice melts into water at 0C (32F). The absolute worst case that can happen is it will drain the molten salts into the containment tank that cancels the reaction and causes the salts to solidify, contained and ready to be extracted. It'll be a royal pain to extract it since it'll pretty much solidify into a block of metal salts, but it sure beats a Chernobyl event. Even if you bomb the reactor and cause a containment breach mid-cycle, the worst that will happen is you'll have a flash fire as the heat escapes and the salts solidify, producing no radioactive gas or particulates.
Even better, you can run it off of the nuclear waste already present, and it consumes 99% of the fissionable materials provided. Meaning not only does it not produce radioactive waste (you keep running it until it produces inert byproducts), it can actually be used to solve our radioactive waste problem!
They don't produce as much power per reactor as a light water or heavy water reactor, but they are also smaller and far safer so you can spam them. A more decentralized energy grid is probably a better thing anyway, as it provides a redundancy and resistance to service disruption if any single reactor or cluster of reactors go down.
The only downside is the initial investment cost of around 1.7 Billion USD. Which is steep, particularly when compared against natural gas or coal plants. However, once amortize that over the lifespan of the reactor, even factoring in operating, maintenance, and fuel costs, it's about a quarter of the price per GW/h of anything else on the market.
Want more? How about both solving CO2 problems AND dependence on foreign oil for transportation fuel at the same time? MSR's operate at high enough temperatures that they can be used as a desalination plant while still producing power (which is tremendously useful in its own right, even if it wasn't generating power), AND they can actually split the carbon and oxygen and hydrogen off from CO2 and water vapour, and make hydrocarbon chains. For those not familiar with biochemistry, this basically means you can create anything inding in -ane or -ol. Like, say, octane. And do so as a BY-PRODUCT of producing power, meaning it is an economically viable supply of gasoline. So you can pipe all that nasty CO2 gas that everyone is so worried about straight on over and convert it into gasoline.
So what is stopping it from being made? The nuclear boogyman, greenpeace being derps, and the initial price tag. Corporations don't want to do something new without first having some guarantees that it is going to pay off. Governments are run by special interest groups, and greenpeace has some pretty deep pockets. But hopefully even that isn't going to keep this from becoming a viable energy source in the future.
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Tl;dr : MSR reactors fix all current energy and waste problems and are 100% safe, but some morons are too stupid to realize how useful they are so it will probably be at least a decade before we actually get them.
Whenever I see this:
I immediately get suspicious.
It is a bit of a hyperbole, yes. There are some issues with MSR's. The initial price tag, for example. For the price of one MSR Reactor, you could probably build a half dozen coal or natural gas burning plants that would produce way more energy. The next problem is governmental regulation which needs to be updated to take in to consideration certain realities. Then you need to get the population as a whole to understand that these reactors are not like Chernobyl or Fukishima, and most of the arguments against them simply no longer apply, so that you don't have angry mobs trying to keep them from being built.
From an engineering perspective, they are amazing. However, we do not live in an ideal world, we live in a world in which politicians exist and the average american is not educated enough to comprehend why this would be a good thing.
Actually, Microsoft of all people has a branch working on building one. And hey, if they can actually get it to work, if not even Microsoft can make it blow up, that's pretty much definitive proof of concept and energy companies will be lining up for theirs.
It's not Greenpeace that is your omnipresent boogeyman.
Most folks are plenty scared of science even if you don't give them firebrands.