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Comment by irjustin | Hacker News Reader

Many of us want to believe this. The problem is the general public doesn't have an appetite for it.

The HBO series Chernobyl is helping/not-helping that cause, but mostly not helping. It is really important not to forget history, not repeat, of course, but the series is bringing nuclear fears to the forefront. For better or worse, we're teaching a whole new generation to interalize those fears about a design that is still very much active [0].

As much as I want to believe the gen 4 reactors are safe and worth attempting, getting this to fly in the public minds is going to take more effort than it's probably worth. For the public, fission power has been poisoned. Single disasters that ruin 20+ years and whole regions of countries are valid/non-ignorable fears.

Large parts of me simply want to dump the money into chasing fusion. Even if it costs 1000x to get there, today money is not the problem - it's sentiment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK

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Corporations and governments use ad campaigns effectively all the time. I'm convinced that if you took a fraction of that fusion money and bombarded people with "nuclear is fine" ads for a year or two, public opinion would change. If a TV show can swing opinion one way, why can't something else swing it back?

In addition to "nuclear is fine", I would add that fusion is not as clean as the public imagines. It is being promoted as power generation without nuclear waste, but in reality you are going to get at least mildly radioactive fusion chamber cladding, which will have to be replaced yearly or so. So there will be a huge pile of radioactive waste generated over the lifetime of fusion power plant. This is in addition to a little problem of fusion power being 25 years away for the last 60 years or so.

1. The quantity of activated material in a magnetic continent fusion reactor would be orders of magnitude less than what is produced (the exhaust is not radioactive).

2. We get to close the radioactive components. It is much more manageable to put up a sign that says “No entry until 2100” than it is to put up a sign that says “No entry until 30000”. The public at large cares about this.

The "quantity" is less in the sense of amount of radioactivity. But the MASS of activated material can be very large. It's not nicely bundled up in easily removed sealed fuel elements.

The biggest problem with this radioactivity is that it renders the reactor inaccessible to hands on maintenance. Everything would have to be handled by robots. I'm reminded of how they handled that at Hanford in WW2: they demonstrated the reprocessing equipment could be maintained remotely by first assembling it remotely. I'll believe a fusion reactor can be maintained if they do the same thing and build it with robots.

The reason we don't have fusion is that we keep looking for above break-even (and for proper fusion power plant we need ratios way above 10:1, afaik) in aneutronic fusion.

If we accepted neutron radiation in the process, which is what would lead to radioactive fusion chamber cladding you mention, we could have broken even already - the experiment JET reactor had the design capacity to run at above 1:1, but wasn't equipped for the damage from neutron radiation.

Breaking even in fusion puts you where fission was in 1942. And that's just a step. The engineering obstacles to practical fusion are enormous, far greater than those facing any advanced fission reactor scheme. I very seriously doubt fusion will ever be practical.

'Nuclear is fine' ads would work until the next misstep, which the negative proponents will be looking for.

Generally, it was looking good until the Fukushima disaster. It resets the clock and that clock takes 20-30 years to play out.

On the 30 year timescale, all the gen 1, 2, 3 designs have flaws which make them potentials for issues. It doesn't even have to be a big issue, just enough for the press to catch it and push "See, they said it was safe... it's not!".

That flaw makes me want to just skip fission all together =/

Yes, fear is in the mind, but despite the fear, the danger is real.

Fear prevents progress but blindness to real danger can cause tragedy. You need to remember that although the HBO series brought nuclear fears to the forefront it is a series that is telling a relatively True story.

Be concerned with the truth, not what a truth can promote.

I think we should move forward with nuclear. But let's say I took away all the fear in the world right now and we started building nuclear power plants near every city, village and town where we and our children live.

I think even an optimist will hesitate before moving forward with such a proposition. Move forward, but move with caution.

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