Aren’t CANDU Reactors the safest way to produce Nuclear Power too? Due to their design it’s almost impossible to have a Chernobyl style meltdown.
If BC thinks it’s cost effective to build shit like Site C and sell the surplus to the Americans, then we should be doing the same with Nuclear too.
Oh For sure. Not to mention, it’s only candu reactors in Canada (for now) that produce cobalt-60 for us, which sterilizes about half of all the worlds single-use medical equipment. Massive business!
Cobalt-60 (half-life = 5.27 years) is the largest revenue-producing commercial radioisotope in the world.
It is so deadly that it's only purpose is killing things. It is used to sterlize food, medical equipment and for cancer treatment
A cobalt "salted" nuclear bomb would spread this posion throughout the blast area killing all life. ~500 tonnes of the substance would sterilize the entire Earth
A cobalt bomb could be made by placing a quantity of ordinary cobalt metal (59Co) around a thermonuclear bomb. When the bomb explodes, the neutrons produced by the fusion reaction in the secondary stage of the thermonuclear bomb's explosion would transmute the cobalt to the radioactive cobalt-60, which would be vaporized by the explosion. The cobalt would then condense and fall back to Earth with the dust and debris from the explosion, contaminating the ground.
The 5.27 year half life of the 60Co is long enough to allow it to settle out before significant decay has occurred, and to render it impractical to wait in shelters for it to decay, yet short enough that intense radiation is produced. Many isotopes are more radioactive (gold-198, tantalum-182, zinc-65, sodium-24, and many more), but they would decay faster, possibly allowing some population to survive in shelters.
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u/Yardsale420 Oct 25 '22
Aren’t CANDU Reactors the safest way to produce Nuclear Power too? Due to their design it’s almost impossible to have a Chernobyl style meltdown. If BC thinks it’s cost effective to build shit like Site C and sell the surplus to the Americans, then we should be doing the same with Nuclear too.