Re:The Next Nuclear Plants Will Be Smaller and Safer
by missosoup on Saturday December 14, 2019 @10:29PM
(#21794266)
In a worst case where all the fuel simultaneously becomes a suspended powder, would kill a bunch of sealife in an area smaller than 100m radius. We do far worse on a regular basis with commercial fishing.
You make a sea reactor dump sound like China Syndrome. The fact that 11+ of them happened with no significant problems makes it pretty clear that you're exaggerating.
Microplastics and plastics in the ocean are a far more serious and far more tangible concern than a hypothetically hijacked ship hypothetically dumping the core which hypothetically turns into powder form.
Again you're describing a sealed or mostly sealed, cold reactor, which is what most spills have been like. That is not what an accident would be like. It's a totally different scenario.
> And the very dangerous isotopes you speak of, they have a very short half-life.
Minutes, hours and days- easily long enough to kill local life outright. My point was that the local effects underwater would be far more disastrous than a similar accident on land, if there is life where the accident happens.
> See also, the Oklo natural nuclear reactor complete with all the associated waste/contamination and the fact that it had little to no impact on the surrounding environment[2].
It was active during the precambrian, and buried underground, which was again the exact assumption of yours that I had an issue with. You are really, fundamentally not understanding what I am saying- a nuclear accident is extremely different from disposal.