#2-son and I finished Chernobyl tonight.

[Laffy Kat]

We've been binge-ing two episodes at a time and watched the one remaining episode this evening. Wow, powerful and dark but also enlightening and educational. My son is a physicist and was able to explain a lot as it was happening, all the different types of radiation and what they can do to the living. I learned loads (mostly how much I didn't know!). Oddly, he still believes there is a place for nuclear energy. I guess we'll have to leave that future up to our children. I signed up for a month of HBO just to watch this one and it was worth the $$. I recommend. Oh, and Jared Harris, son of Richard Harris, was phenomenal.

[IcyPeas]

1. There were a few threads on this show last year

I agree it was educational. And dark. Fantastic series.

Do a DU search and you can see some others comments.

[Laffy Kat]

4. I will do that. I was late to the game with this one.

[mahina]

2. Ernie Moniz thinks

Last edited Mon Feb 17, 2020, 09:00 AM - Edit history (1)

We will survive climate change if we can develop nuclear fusion and carbon capture at scale
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-al-franken-podcast/id1462195742?i=1000445147462

[hunter]

7. Fission power plants work now. Fusion doesn't, and possibly never will.

Fusion reactors: Not what they’re cracked up to be

Fusion reactors have long been touted as the “perfect” energy source. Proponents claim that when useful commercial fusion reactors are developed, they would produce vast amounts of energy with little radioactive waste, forming little or no plutonium byproducts that could be used for nuclear weapons. These pro-fusion advocates also say that fusion reactors would be incapable of generating the dangerous runaway chain reactions that lead to a meltdown—all drawbacks to the current fission schemes in nuclear power plants.

And, like fission, a fusion-powered nuclear reactor would have the enormous benefit of producing energy without emitting any carbon to warm up our planet’s atmosphere.

But there is a hitch: While it is, relatively speaking, rather straightforward to split an atom to produce energy (which is what happens in fission), it is a “grand scientific challenge” to fuse two hydrogen nuclei together to create helium isotopes (as occurs in fusion).

--more--

https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/#

Nuclear power is the only sustainable way to support the high energy industrial economy many affluent people now enjoy.

We knew what we had to do fifty years ago but the fossil fuel industry was too powerful and nuclear power caused people to freak out in a way that the more dangerous but familiar fossil fuels did not.

Some innovative and economical fusion power system may come along but it's crazy to bet our planet's health on that.

[mahina]

8. I am aware. He said we'll know in @10 years if it

Can possibly work.

It’s a good interview linked in my last post. I respect him and accept his informed perspective.

I didn’t hear it as an either or.
Ernie Moniz:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Moniz

[hunter]

10. Moniz is on the board of directors of TAE technologies, which is working on Hydrogen-Boron fusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAE_Technologies

Aneutronic fusion would be a lot cleaner than most current fusion reactor designs.

I think it's some very worthy research. My concern with all these potential "save the world" technologies is that we already know what we have to do to save the world and we already have the technologies to do it.

The first thing we have to do is quit fossil fuels. No technology is going to magically displace fossil fuels; not fission, not fusion, not solar, or anything else.

[mahina]

11. No single technology.

[hlthe2b]

3. I did not know that Jared Harris was son of Richard. I've seen him in a lot of things & never knew.

Yes. Chernobyl was excellent. It was eery though, for those of us alive during this time, no matter how young. There was a deep sense that something truly horrendous was happening and being covered up but to see so many of the details unfold all these years later because someone had the integrity and forethought to preserve some of the story is reassuring.

[Laffy Kat]

5. Before I watched the last one yesterday, I pulled up a documentary on Three-Mile Island.

Alarmingly, there were quite a few parallels. TMI wasn't nearly as catastrophic, of course, although it had that potential, yet it too was caused by ignorance of what the plant was capable of and an inability to troubleshoot. There was also the attempted cover-up and misinformation from both the energy company and local government.

[IcyPeas]

6. I got slightly obsessed with this for a while and

if you search youtube there are quite a few good documentaries on Chernobyl. there's one about the first men who went on to the roof to try and clear the radioactive debris. some include interviews with some of the still surviving men.

I didn't see the TMI island one.... you've got me all interested in this again. I am going to look for that.

it's what happens when you put people in charge who don't know what they are doing and the people who cover up for that person (hmmmm, sounds very familiar )

[Laffy Kat]

9. I'm finding it fascinating, too.

I'm going to keep researching. I haven't even opened anything about Fukashima yet.