EU members want more subsidies for nuclear power

[Niri Te]

I remember a debate back in the early eighties, where these two allegedly knowledgable people who had ties to the nuclear power industry were fighting over weather or not Fusion reactors were a good idea, and those were the two sides of the argument that the two were bringing up.
The one said that you could feed the reactor the old fuel rods, and the other said that the last thing that we needed, was more weapons grade Plutonium floating around for someone to steal.
Now I don't know who had their info right, and who had it wrong, all that I know, it that those were the two points that these two supposed "Experts in the field" were fighting about on the radio.
I don't know everything about everything. I am one of the best at flying, shooting, and blowing stuff yup for "Uncle Sam". Most everything else, if someone is introduced as an expert, I figure that they know what they are talking about.
Niri Te

[Human No More]

They were both completely and utterly wrong

Anyone can be a self-professed expert, but even more so in the 80s before easy access to information to fact-check.

Originally Posted by Niri Te

If you pay attention to what I said, it was (Paraphrased, that while the Fusion reactors were very clean, and produced (by comparison to fission reactors) far less radioactive waste, AND were FED the old fuel rods from the fission reactors, the anti fission reactor crowd would ALSO jump down the throats of the Fusion reactor supporters, because the small amount of radioactive waste left over from the FUSION REACTORS, was weapons grade plutonium.

Not at all true. Fusion produces helium; reactor waste is not fusionable; it can NOT be used as fuel for fusion, where fuels have LOW atomic numbers.
The products also have low atomic numbers, albeit higher than the individual fuels. Helium-4 (which is actually just common helium, >99% of naturally occurring isotopes, and a typical fusion product) has an atomic number of 4. Plutonium has an atomic number from 238 to 244 depending on the isotope.

Elements heavier than iron (atomic number 26) are not usable as fusionable fuels.

Originally Posted by The Silver Stag

One has to figure out what is considered an acceptable risk. Nobody like volatile things, espcially when they can cause the kind of trouble Japan has suffered through. There are no guarantees ever, programs can have bugs in them, hardware can malfunction and before you know it your safety mechanisms are worthless. Everybody makes mistakes, even the brightest engineers that would be in charge of stuff like this.

Nope. Reactors are not at all volatile (reacts readily, potentially unpredictably); they are the complete opposite. At all times, both the automated systems and human operators are actively working to prevent it from automatically shutting down.

Learn a bit of basic design theory, systems can fail badly (meaning a failure mode can/will place it into an inconsistent, unpredictable or dangerous state, compromise operations or some other undesirable consequence), or they can fail well (in the context of safety systems, typically when they will stop by themselves and operational systems have to actively PREVENT this, a common example is the dead-man's switch used on various machinery, or an electromagnet that holds a contact open - if it, the supply or control system fails, the contact closes).

As for terrorists, all their current ways of attacking can kill a few hundred or thousand people but for them to be in control of a nuclear power station could harm/kill millions, I think it's a bit different.

Again, you're conflating a reactor with a bomb. That is wrong to the point of flat out wilful ignorance.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasc...9/phy99554.htm
A reactor is barely critical and controlled by graphite moderators and neutron poisons (and indeed, fails to an inert state without oversignt); a bomb is a critical mass held barely subcritical so that any further introduction (normally a compression) will cause a spontaneous criticality, with no control and with neutron-reflective materials to increase the rate over time.
Also, at the risk of going off topic, I want to ask just what weapons have to do with this topic? I know you won't be able to answer though; that's like complaining about electricity because railguns are in development/theoretically possible, or the wheel because tanks use them too, or fire because if someone is stupid enough to put their hand in it, they will get injured. It's a red herring argument.

In truth it's not humans I'm worried about, they have the means to get out of there. It's everything else I'm scared for, the ones that can't pick up and leave when disaster strikes.

Again, where are humans going?
Even if humans did magically disappear, the entire point is that without operation, the criticality is lost.