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Microsoft inks deal to restart Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to fuel its voracious AI ambitions
(www.tomshardware.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The radioactivity from the long half-life radionuclides is much less intense.
Radioactive iodine is still dangerous because it can stay in your thyroid gland
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-lived_fission_product
You can still use newer technology to get rid of the most potent LLFPs, though
Right I only got as far as talking about the ionizing radiation itself not even what happens if the radioation emitting materials themselves escape and so other types of radiation become dangerous through ingestion, not just incidental exposure.
And who is going to pay the trillions of dollars to develop those technologies to reduce the ionizing radiation into a usable product? The energy companies won't because they'd go bankrupt. And what happened when we left companies to dispose of the waste? They sank it to the bottom of the ocean in barrels that some have since resurfaced. So instead we tried to build a temporary solution by dumping it in a mountain bunker, but that was too costly and we gave up and it's all just sitting out in the open still in every country with nuclear power. No country has come up with a solution yet and that solution is part of the cost of generating the energy.
So how is nuclear power profitable if it's exorbitantly expensive to store it indefinitely and exponentially more expensive to develop the technology to make it slightly safer to store indefinitely. And it costs billions and takes decades to decommission a reactor once it's exceeded its lifespan. Which is why three mile island is still there and containment is still necessary. Again, how is nuclear power cost effective in the long term?
It's not cost effective, but it's more green than gas or coal
More green if nothing goes wrong and in the short term. I'm not saying fossil fuels are the answer. I believe they need to be phased out ASAP.
But there are lots of alternatives that are lower cost to build, lower cost to operate, lower cost in case of accidents, and exponentially lower cost to future generations relates to waste storage.
Until those alternatives displace all of coal and gas...