floralcurtains57

I've seen loads on Twitter recently about the nuclear community getting annoyed that the renewable research community always post themselves as enemies rather than a joint solution to climate change. How collaborative have you found the different research communities when coming together to talk realities about business, policy support and ultimate goals of phasing out fossil fuels?

Love this question!! There are people who make careers in all walks of science advising on the realities of stories being told - usually on screen. However, from my understanding most storytelling loses its big moments when getting the science (as we currently know it) accurate, so lots of big films dont bother with the scientific guidance.

I don't really have a stance on this personally. I think lots of great stories are great exactly because they talk about things that wouldnt happen in real life. But that's difficult to align with a story that is trying to keep things accurate.

Maybe you could have created your own kind of nuclear reactor - called it the next generation that had far higher risks of explosion but people were happy to accept it as it meant getting cheap energy into the market faster? Poetic licence and all that.

As someone who worked in uk decomissioning for a few years with low level security clearance, personal safety was not something I ever heard anyone mention as a reason for concern. So super interesting question to bring up!

I think information control is the biggest thing. So it's about document control, IT systems, knowledge sharing. And I guess a person could be targeted if it was thought that they could provide access to information. As far as my rudimentary understanding of the scientific side of fusion or fission, I don't think theres very many people who would be individually thought of as "valuable". It's such a web of knowledge needed for this tech, so whole teams of people would contribute.

In terms of weaponization - nuclear energy is so different from weapons in many ways. It's probably unlikely many researchers consider their specific research area at risk of this. Or course some will, but there's probably bigger things at play such as other connections to the defence industry using their research tangentially. The biggest risk of weaponization (again I say from my rudimentary point of view) would be someone finding out the best place to drop a bomb near old nuclear sites, or the nuclear waste itself we hear of being dumped in countries who don't have facilities in place to deal with it. So really it's the whole supply chain were a lot of risk lies.

Nuclear plants are often put right next to oceans as a lot of water is needed in the cooling process - in the UK they are nearly all on rural coastal spots, except for Trawsfynydd which is next to a small lake.

But the issues in Fukushima were many human engineering errors, meaning safety designs didn't hold up. I think I'm right in remembering the back up generator was moved to be put in a location affected by the quake then below water level once the tsunami did hit.

Also some interesting examples in Fukushima of how the emergency response was not well planned and created bigger issues

Just a random commenter here who is enjoying the discussion, so want to chip in with no helpful response to your questions....

This sounds FASCINATING. It sounds like the beginning of some weird TV show or film. Like how can a 1 man team really be doing nuclear fusion. Is that safe? How much funding has he managed to secure on his own?? Amazing

Although someone I met through nuclear research did tell me their dad is a "uranium prospector" (Yes, cool job title) who apparently runs his own business so has a lab set up in his shed to test rock samples sent to him for uranium content levels. blew my mind, but seems like there is scope for some types of small scale research like this