Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to re: I agree with part of what you said

re: I agree with part of what you said
Tom Brosz — (archived)

A long time ago when this first came up, we tallied the total estimated energy released by man-made nuclear sources, and stuck it up next to the energy hitting the Earth from the sun.

All the nuclear power plants on Earth, running full critical, not some isotopes quietly decaying somewhere, run at about 340,000 MW. The sun hits the Earth with about 2 x 10^11 MW.

Blow open every reactor on Earth and let the heat seeth out into the atmosphere*, and it's still like sticking a lit match next to a forest fire as far as overall heat flux goes. This seems to make no impression at all on you.

Nobody is saying radioactive decay of elements floating around the surface doesn't add heat. It just doesn't add a measurable amount. In any case, I suspect that the actions of naturally-occuring radioactive decay both in the atmosphere and beneath the Earth's crust far outweigh that of artificially-added isotopes.

*To the rest of you: Yes, I know the heat ends up in the atmosphere anyway, even with the reactor operating normally.

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