Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout

On 11/06/2025 2:32 am, David Brown wrote:

On 10/06/2025 16:16, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 10/06/2025 5:21 pm, David Brown wrote:

On 10/06/2025 07:01, Bill Sloman wrote:

On 10/06/2025 6:44 am, Liz Tuddenham wrote:

Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
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On 2025-06-09 21:54, Don Y wrote:

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OTOH, we're sticking with other technologies (fossil fuels -- coal -- and
nukes) despite obvious and yet to be solved problems INHERENT in their
technology.  Adding "inertia" synthetically to a network is a considerably
more realistic goal than sorting out how to deal with nuclear waste or
the consequences of burning carbon.

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Technically and economically, dealing with nuclear waste is many orders of magnitude easier than dealing with the consequences of burning carbon.

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Nuclear fission waste is mixture of isotopes. Some of them are very radioactive and decay fast, and keeping them safe until they've mostly decayed is technically demanding. The less radioactive isotopes are easier to handle, but some of them stay dangerously radioactive for upwards of 100,000 years, and keeping them safely isolated for that length of time is an as yet unsolved problem
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 We all know that, I believe.  There are two ways to handle the waste - bury it deep enough, or use reprocessing/recycling to reduce the worst of the waste.  (Of course a better idea is to use more advanced nuclear reactors that produce more electricity for less waste.)

There aren't any. If you fission U-233 (which is what thorium reactors do) you get slightly different proportions of exactly the same isotopes as you get from U-235 which pose essentially the same problems.
You don't get any Pu-239 from neutron capture in U-238, but that's a feature rather than a bug.
Nuclear fusion is more promising and hydrogen-boron fusion doesn't produce any neutrons at all - or wouldn't if anybody could get it to work.
https://hb11.energy/
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Bill Sloman, Sydney