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Warum Kernenergie?

Neulich wurde ich auf Facebook gefragt, warum ich eigentlich so ein »AKW-Verfechter« sei. Meine kurzen und knappen Antworten hier leicht überarbeitet:

4 Antworten

  1. Danke für diese ausführlichen Informationen. Ich bin glasklar für Kernkraft als Übergangstechnologie und traue mich auch diese Meinung in der Öffentlichkeit zu vertreten. Auch wenn man dafür fast gelyncht wird. Danke für die vielen hilfreichen Argumente.
    Thomas Busch

  2. Why Nuclear Energy? You say that it has the least risk, but you have not defined „risk“. What are the accident hazards of the several types of nuclear power plants? What are the potentials for nuclear reactor eruptions? I recommended that you addressed and answer the foregoing questions.
    Respectfully,
    Richard Webb

  3. Correction to my commentary: The words „recommended“ and „addressed“ should have been written in the present tense.. So, I re-state my commentary below with the correct, intended words. Richard Webb

    Why Nuclear Energy? You say that it has the least risk, but you have not defined “risk”. What are the accident hazards of the several types of nuclear power plants? What are the potentials for nuclear reactor eruptions? I recommend that you address and answer the foregoing questions.
    Respectfully,
    Richard Webb

    1. The accident hazards differ for different reactors.

      Let’s start with the worst one: Chernobyl-Type RBMK. Can get unstable up to prompt supercritical chain reaction, leading to e steam explosion disrupting the entire reactor. That accident has spread radioactive fission products over a significant part of Ukraine, but still caused less deaths than your average coal mining accident. Yes, about 2000 people, mostly children, got thyroid cancer, but those could be operated. Your average coal power plant causes the same amount of illness every year of normal operation.

      Next in line are big Boiling Water Reactors like Fukushima. it needed the worst mother nature could throw at it to cause a meltdown: a century-scale earthquake plus a follow-up tsunami. Which had to be timed just so, that after the earthquake-caused shutdown, the crew had enough time to decide „okay, the diesel-powered cooling runs just fine, we can turn off the extra passive cooling“ just before the tsunami hit…

      Then there are Pressurized Water Reactors. Those are used on virtually any big ship of the US Navy, from aircraft carrier to submarine. None of those ever had a meltdown.

      Also tested on submarines are liquid-metal-cooled reactors, famous for powering the soviet Alpha-Class submarines. The worst accidents they ever had was not melting of the core, but freezing of the molten lead the had as coolant. Shortly, the sub was in the dock, the reactor was shut down, an the dock crew didn’t manage to keep the lead hot enough to stay liquid. The good thing about this, lead is very good for shielding radioactivity, so you could just take the complete „frozen reactor“ and put it into some underground waste deposit.

      Molten salt reactors can’t have a meltdown, because the fuel is already molten during normal operation. These haven’t yet been commercialized, but back in the 60s, the MSRE was walk-away-safe: on friday afternoon, you turnt of the cooling, the molten salt dropped into a non-critical storage tank to cool down, and you could go into your weekend.

      So, how would YOU define „risk“?

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