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UnadvertisedAndroid t1_j7gznde wrote

Why are our attitudes towards rocketing nuclear material into the stratosphere and beyond all of the sudden changing from "absolutely not" to "this is fine"?

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VitaminPb t1_j7h0r4n wrote

The anti-nuclear groups are losing funding thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia is a big part of it. Also, the anti-nuclear groups were largely ignorant and manipulated baby boomers who are dying off.

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urmomaisjabbathehutt t1_j7hc44g wrote

the "anti nuclear groups" don't matter to to investors and money makers the same that those against fossil fuels didn't matter, the soviet union never was anti nuclear either

as per nuclear propulsion goes the soviets developed and lauched several and if this didn't go further was due to the policies for the use of nuclears in space driven by national security agreements between the world powers not because any "anti nuclear groups"

the only thing that matters to investors are returns to their investment the less riskier and the quicker the better and on that nuclears never competed with oil neverminnd with renewables

this thread is about nuclear propulsion

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dittybopper_05H t1_j7hixec wrote

>the soviet union never was anti nuclear either

The Soviet Union was never anti-nuclear for itself.

However, the anti-nuclear movement in the West was at least encouraged, if not partially funded, by the USSR, especially when it came to nuclear weapons. But it also spilled into nuclear power generation.

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Miserable-Deal-5703 t1_j7h8upm wrote

Why Uranium based though... My very limited knowledge on these things thought that Thorium reactors were the safer option?

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cjameshuff t1_j7hflsk wrote

There's already ~4 billion metric tons of uranium in seawater. Dissolving the entire reactor and dumping it into the ocean would have no measurable effect. RTGs are actually more dangerous, as they require isotopes with high enough levels of radioactivity to generate useful amounts of heat, and those materials are at their highest levels of activity the moment they are produced...you can't just delay turning them on until after they've safely launched.

Thorium is just another possible fission fuel. It's often proposed to be used in a molten salt reactor, but molten salt reactors are not all thorium reactors and thorium reactors are not all molten salt reactors. There's no shortage of safe uranium reactor designs, it's just been impossible to get them implemented because of the anti-nuclear groups.

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[deleted] t1_j7h7kkd wrote

TRISO fuel among other safety advances mean that dangers due to a failed launch are massively limited compared to a few decades ago.

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[deleted] t1_j7hik2j wrote

Space is already radioactive. The vehicles using nuclear propulsion will be outside of the atmosphere and shouldn't make an impact on radiation levels on earth. It was frowned upon because it was seen as putting nuclear weapons in Space, but that's different now. We could all easily kill each other with ICBM's so putting a nuclear ship in Space isn't the treat it was in the 70's, plus we can put more mass into space now, so things like shielding are less costly.

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Leather-Mundane t1_j7hyswa wrote

The fact that there has never been a accident with a payload containing fissile material.

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