On 15/04/2011 16:35, Darren New wrote:
> On 4/15/2011 5:57, Invisible wrote:
>> That's kind of my point. You only need to be slightly wrong about one
>> tiny thing, and it's game over.
>
> Not really. Look up thorium salt reactors. They don't go critical, the
> wastes are not very radioactive, you can't blow them up, etc etc.
> They're much safer.

As I understand it, normal nuclear reactors are incapable of a *nuclear* 
explosion. That doesn't mean that the cooling system can't overload and 
explode. Or freak weather conditions level the building. Or somebody 
flies a passenger jet into it. Or...

>> Fires can be put out, even oil spills can be mopped up [eventually]. But
>> radiation is forever. [Or rather, "for such a huge time period that it
>> might
>> as well be forever".]
>
> Depending on the radiation, oil spills probably last longer than lots of
> kinds of radiation problems.

Uranium-235 has a halflife is 700 million years. That's /halflife/, not 
the time it takes to degrade completely, just the time for *half* of it 
to go away. 700 million years is longer than that oil has been in the 
ground. ;-)

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