Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Is there any reason why large cargo ships could not be nuclear powered? Most goods are shipped around the world in extremely large container ships these days.
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In fact, the shipping industry is one of the most fuel-efficient and least polluting of all our transportation systems... we need to fix others before we fix that. If we have to go nuclear, it should be in modern plants, providing electricity to a grid that feeds other forms of transportation (cars, trucks, buses, trains). Safer and better controlled.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Fuel from a nuclear reactor cannot be used to create nuclear weapons. This is a popular misconception. Nuclear fuel is only mildly enriched; weapons-grade material requires a very high level of enrichment.
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According to a
Scientific American article from a few years back, fuel from older reactors (like many in Russia and the U.S.) is capable of being reprocessed into low-grade weapons material (dirty bombs and such). Newer fourth-generation reactor designs recycle the fuel until the remainder is no good for even dirty weapons... but there are very few reactors of that type in existence today (or
none... most reactors around the world are generation 2 or 3 right now, I'm not sure a 4th gen has been built yet).