There are many things I don't understand astrayalien but in those tiny corners of science that are illuminated for me at least I am able to recognise the parts where my knowledge is deficient. For example it had not occurred to me that there was a need to be able to feather emergency reactor cooling pumps powered by reactor decay heat. The control mechanism needed to be independent of emergency electricity supply. Like so many others who can craft some of the millions of little things a reactor needs it just hadn't occurred to me that such control might make the difference between shutdown and catastrophic meltdown.
The need for baseline cancer studies isn't my field but Chernobyl has taught the industry the need to differentiate between inevitable natural cancers and ones statistically attributable to nuclear disaster. Greenpeace associates every cancer in the Ukraine with Chernobyl and produces some truly catastrophic numbers. Are they right? Without the baseline studies to give us cancer rates before as well as after the disaster we cannot know the proportion of recent cancers attributable to that Chernobyl graphite fire.
You are right about not understanding but I take small comfort in recognising at least a few of the things I don't understand.
What about you astrayalien?
What sort of expertise can you bring to a discussion on thorium reactors?
How do you know they represent "a very safe alternative to uranium reactors" when there has been so little research into their use?
Do you know why thorium reactors are not being constructed routinely?
Uranium fuelled ones are being constructed, commissioned and mothballed ones brought back into service but only one thorium reactor to my knowledge is actually being built right now.
