[HN Gopher] US regulators will certify first small nuclear react... ___________________________________________________________________ US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design Author : papa-whisky Score : 429 points Date : 2022-07-29 22:56 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | sroussey wrote: | I wonder how long it Will take to certify the even smaller ones | that are shipping container sized, by the likes of Radiant et al? | lven wrote: | Probably the same or longer. In fact, the NuScale concept has | been pursued since 2002, so more like 2 decades from concept to | NRC certification. And you can tack on another 10 years for | their hardware demonstration according to their published | timelines. Size is not the question here. It's the analysis of | the neutronics, thermal hydraulics, coupling of various | systems, accident sequence prediction, etc. What takes time is | credibility, ultimately getting all the parties involved to | believe the calculations and understand the engineering | decisions, and collectively agree that it's gonna work out. | Have to convince the regulators, the advisory boards, the | utility customers, the DOE, the suppliers. | mwattsun wrote: | _" The SMR's 12 modules, each producing 50 megawatts"_ | | So each module is a little smaller than the reactor of the 1960's | era submarine I served on and is based on the same pressurized | water technology. I was a "nuke" so had to go in the reactor | compartment several times. As far as I can remember, the reactor | was about 10 feet in diameter. We went in the shipyard for | refueling after the lifetime of the rods, which was 15 years. I | could never understand why we didn't build these for civilian use | (cost I figured) but now we will. Cool. | | https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-... | titzer wrote: | I've had friends that served on nuke subs. It still blows my | mind that a sub only needs to refuel once every 15 _years_. | | I never understood the argument nuclear power is so | "dangerous". The US navy has fielded nuclear reactors in | warzones since _1954_ and no Chernobyl. Almost the entire fleet | is nuclear-powered, including all aircraft carriers, subs, and | battleships. | bobthepanda wrote: | The military has a much lower bar for safety though, given | all the incidents around chemical poisonings and pollution | like soldiers getting exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam or | burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. | tragictrash wrote: | The military has a lower bar for taking responsibility for | those it views as disposable. | kylemh wrote: | does that not simply further the point of the post you | responded to? | | despite lower standards, they've had no incidents | Manuel_D wrote: | And yet despite they lower bar, there have been no nuclear | accidents. Perhaps the NRC's bar for nuclear safety is | needlessly high. A realistic safety regime needs to weight | the risk of accidents with the immense risks of continued | carbon emissions. | mwattsun wrote: | The Nuclear Navy has an extremely high bar for safety, | hence no nuclear accidents. Unlike the Air Force | apparently, which sometimes loses hydrogen bombs. Go Navy! | | https://www.google.com/search?q=air+force+lost+hydrogen+bom | b... | MichaelCollins wrote: | The US Navy has fumbled a few nuclear bombs too (from | airplanes and also submarines), their impeccable safety | record is for nuclear reactors specifically. They've lost | two nuclear powered submarines, but neither of those was | due to reactor problems. | formerkrogemp wrote: | It's harder to lose your metaphorical nuclear fuel tank | than your metaphorical nuclear bullet I guess. | runarberg wrote: | I don't think the US military is a positive example of safe | usage of nuclear. First the Hanford nuclear site in | Washington is one of the most polluted site in the entire | state. The cleanup effort is the regions biggest employer and | is costing the local communities, the state, and the federal | government millions of dollars every year. | | The Bikini Atoll in the Marshall islands is one of the most | polluted places in the pacific ocean. The US military | conducted nuclear testing around there and simply swept the | pollution in one place. There are dozens of reports of cancer | from both former military personnel an nearby local | population. And concerns are rising with elevated sea level | that pollution will be leaking at greater pace then | currently. | | These are just two examples of the US military neglecting | safety concerns with their nuclear technology. There is no | single spectacular event like the Chernobyl disaster. But | rather decades of neglect and disregard to public safety | which polluted many areas leaving potentially an overall | damage on par--and potentially greater--then the Chernobyl | disaster. | smegger001 wrote: | Hanafords mess dates back to the manahatten project and | processed uranium and plutonium for fat man and little boy. | the 1940s was a long fucking time ago. and when have | learned a lot since then and technology has advanced. the | testing in Bikini atoll was awful but has nothing to do | with nuclear power its about weapons testing which is a | entirely unrelated issue and we stopped doing that. | titzer wrote: | You're saying that nuclear testing produces a lot of | radioactive fallout? Yeah, it does. This is absolutely | _not_ the same thing as operating a nuclear reactor. | runarberg wrote: | Hanford had nuclear reactors. | | But that is despite the point. Their safety record with | nuclear is horrendous. Full of examples of neglect and | pollution. I'm not an expert in the nuclear history of | the US military, but I wouldn't be surprised that many of | their smaller reactors have similar stories as Hanford. | It is just not as spectacular--and therefor not as much | in the public consciousness--as Chernobyl. | smegger001 wrote: | yes they had reactors that were shutdown clear back in | the 70s for being to old of design. | MichaelCollins wrote: | It's not the US Military _generally_ that is held up as an | example of nuclear safety, it 's _specifically_ the US Navy | 's track record for operating nuclear reactors. Hanford was | a big mess, but that wasn't run by the Navy. Bikini Atoll | was bad, but that wasn't caused by a mistake operating a | nuclear reactor. | | Your supposition that reactor accidents smaller than | Chernobyl might be hidden from the public doesn't seem well | grounded either; we know the US Army fucked up the | operation of the SL-1 reactor, resulting in 3 deaths. | Here's a big list of nuclear fuckups: https://en.wikipedia. | org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid... Some of those | severe, some minor. I don't see much reason to believe that | substantial naval reactor incidents have been omitted from | that list. Such accidents are hard to hide from long, | particularly if it means a bunch of sailors got irradiated | or a ship had to be taken out of service for | decontamination / repair. The incidents on that list | bracket the sort of mystery accident you're supposing; it | lists accidents much less severe and much more severe. | mikewarot wrote: | >I never understood the argument nuclear power is so | "dangerous". | | Oil companies paid to form that opinion in the public. | | >no Chernobyl | | Chernobyl was the result of a HIGHLY unauthorized, and stupid | experiment... phenomenally stupid. So many red flags were | driven past at high speed. | czstar wrote: | I believe you are wrong about the causes of the Chernobyl | disaster. The consensus these days is that it was due to | poor reactor design. | baobabKoodaa wrote: | Many causes can be attributed to the disaster. | XorNot wrote: | That's taking a blameless post-mortem approach which is a | valid tool, but not the entire answer. | | The reality is to cause the issue, the operators had to | drive the reactor well into a dangerous and hard to | control regime which it would not get into under any | normal operation circumstance. | | So while yes, it shouldn't have been physically possible | to do it, even with that design it took substantial, | deliberate malfeasance to get that result (you can also | _only_ get that result with that design - a meltdown is | not normally an explosion). | ComputerGuru wrote: | It was poor reactor design combined with downright stupid | actions by management. But a nuclear plant should be | somewhat stupid-proof. | hutrdvnj wrote: | I think if Chernobyl happens on the open sea, then it's not | very dangerous, but if you imagine nuke aircraft crashes in | dense populated areas. | inejge wrote: | _It still blows my mind that a sub only needs to refuel once | every 15_ years _._ | | One of the things making this possible is 90+ percent | enrichment of U235 in the fuel. That's weapons grade and | won't fly in a civilian reactor. I haven't read NuScale's | application in great detail but I'd be surprised if they used | anything above 5 percent. | schrodinger wrote: | Can you explain more about what that means or suggest what | to Google to learn more? | gautamcgoel wrote: | There are two uranium isotopes present on earth, U-235 | and U-238. U-235 is the fissile material which powers | nuclear reactions in both nuclear bombs and nuclear power | plants. The 5% number represents the fraction of uranium | in the fuel which is U-235 instead of U-238. Anything | above 20% or so is considered "highly enriched", and | nuclear bombs often have fuel which is 80-90% U-235. | jmyeet wrote: | > I never understood the argument nuclear power is so | "dangerous". | | The Chernobyl absolute exclusion zone is quite literally 1000 | square miles. Nuclear advocates try to treat Chernobyl (and | Fukushima and [insert nuclear disaster here]) as an | irrelevant outlier rather than what it is: tangible evidence | of the impact of inevitable human failure. | | A plant has to be well-maintained and competently run. Waste | products have to be safely stored and transported. As soon as | you add corporations to the mix, you've now created a profit | motive to neglect safety and maintenance because the risk of | disaster is low but the failure modes are incredibly large. | Humans have shown themselves to consistently be incredibly | bad at managing low-probability high-impact failures. | | > The US navy has fielded nuclear reactors in warzones since | 1954 and no Chernobyl. | | Military use of nuclear reactors is quite limited, being | largely limited to a handful of submarines and aircraft | carriers using highly enriched fuel. It's not done out of | economic merit either. Having a nuclear missile submarine | that can stay deployed for months can literally be done no | other way. | | All that has very little to do with commercial power | generation. | chihuahua wrote: | I agree in principle, but I am not aware of any nuclear | powered battleships. Iowa class BBs have steam turbines | running on fuel oil. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Not battleships, but America did have several nuclear | powered cruisers which lasted around 15-30 years (but all | were decommissioned in the 90s.) They weren't battleships, | but that term is sometimes used colloquially to refer to | any surface warship other than carriers. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear- | powered_cruisers_of_th... | mLuby wrote: | > but that term [battleships] is sometimes used | colloquially to refer to any surface warship other than | carriers | | Really? I wouldn't be surprised to hear someone call a | frigate a cruiser or a littoral combat ship a destroyer | or an amphibious assault ship a carrier but everyone | knows battleships are the biggest big-gun ships out | there. | MichaelCollins wrote: | I think so, at least for some people who don't have an | interest in military stuff or machines generally. Similar | to the way any armored but unarmed truck may sometimes be | called "a tank." (https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=police | +tank&iax=images&ia=i...) | | I try not to judge, I'm probably equally wrong without | knowing it about things as far outside my area of | interest. | [deleted] | squidlogic wrote: | Correct me if I'm wrong haven't Iowa class battleships all | been decommissioned sometime in the early 1990s? | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | Yes, and it was a colossal waste of money keeping them | running even that long. Realistically they should have | been scrapped in the period after the Korean war. | frozenport wrote: | aircraft carriers? | MichaelCollins wrote: | All of America's supercarriers have been nuclear powered | since the USS Kitty Hawk was decommissioned in 2009. | | But if you include "amphibious assault ships" like the | Wasp class, which can carry a lot of helicopters and | STOVL airplanes like the F-35B and Harrier, then US Navy | still has a lot of conventional powered carriers. | shawabawa3 wrote: | He's technically correct. All zero of the US navy's | battleships are nuclear powered | justinclift wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine#Accidents | nradov wrote: | Only a small fraction of the US Navy's fleet is nuclear | powered, specifically just the submarines and carriers. Their | last battleships were decommissioned many years ago, and | those were all conventionally powered. The Navy did build a | few nuclear powered surface warships decades ago, but that | was largely a failure due to high costs and operational | limitations; they don't plan to build any more. | indymike wrote: | What really killed the CGNs (nuclear powered destroyers) | was VLS (vertical launch system) and AEGIS - the sensor | suite that newer Navy destroyers and cruisers are built | around. CGNs were all built around magazine fed rail-style | missile launchers, and sensors were all designed when state | of the art was a transistor. Refitting ships to modern | sensors like AEGIS and modern VLS was almost a complete | rebuild. Even early Ticonderoga class conventionally | powered cruisers (CGs) that had rail launchers were retired | early because of the cost of refit to VLS. | | Incidentally, VLS allows for much faster deployment of | missiles, and doesn't require deck space for different | launchers for different missiles, and a ship with a modern | VLS have a huge rate-of-fire advantage on older rail | launcher equipped ships. | DougWebb wrote: | That may have been the reason for mothballing the old | ship designs, but why weren't the new ones nuclear | powered? That seems to be independent of the missile | launcher design. | c3534l wrote: | Same reason people are afraid of getting robbed at night when | they're more common during the day when everyone is at work, | or why we're scared of heights and planes, but cars and | horseback riding don't phase us. Fear is an emotional | reaction, not a rational one. | oceanplexian wrote: | The fact is we could be doing a heck of a lot of cool things, | if it weren't for the anti-nuke crowd that set the technology | back 20-30 years. | | Imagine a world where economies of scale bring nuclear power | down to the cost of fuel and maintenance. EVs would be a no | brainer Natural gas would be obsolete. Nuclear desalination | would completely solve the water crisis in the US West. I'm | confident that with advances in material science we would | figure out how to build safe nuclear aircraft and nuclear | rockets, ushering in a new space age. Really the | possibilities are incredible. It would be the equivalent of | humanity going from horse and buggy to using fossil fuels, | but another order of magnitude. | narrator wrote: | If we had all that then all the things besides energy that | are used in production would be depleted faster. We would | have bigger populations, etc. | landemva wrote: | That vision needs waste disposal or processing, which Jimmy | Carter halted when he took office. It matters little that | Ronald Reagan removed the prohibition, as investors will | not put capital toward that again because the investment | can be wiped out a few years later based on whims of | politics. Without waste processing, storage of waste onsite | forever creates an investment problem for new construction | in USA. | | https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclearpower-waste- | id... | | 'Former President Jimmy Carter halted reprocessing in 1977, | citing proliferation concerns.' | runarberg wrote: | This is wishful thinking. France for example never had a | Three mile island type of disaster which tilted the public | opinion of nuclear power, like the USA did. They continued | building up their nuclear power plants well into the 1990s | but failed to bring construction costs and delays down like | your comment suggests. | | In fact if we take Germany as a counter-example, when they | stopped building nuclear power plants due to popular | demand, they significantly increased renewable energy to a | point where they are currently replacing coal power at a | greater rate then France, despite Germany actively shutting | down nuclear plants that still had years of life left. | | This shows that Nuclear power might actually be a hindrance | towards an electrified future, as governments have | historically put to much faith in it, which was ultimately | unwarranted, instead of investing in renewables. | | EDIT: I feel like people are focusing on the wrong point | here. I was apparently--and unintentionally--disingenuous | by touting Germany's success in replacing coal power with | renewables, as compared to France. However, my main point | still stands, that investing in nuclear well into the 1990s | did _not_ bring costs and delays of new plants down. | espadrine wrote: | > _France for example never had a Three mile island type | of disaster which tilted the public opinion of nuclear | power_ | | Despite that, the public opinion soured so bad, that it | is the detractors that had to bring disaster to nuclear | reactors. Protestors fired rocket-propelled grenades at a | plant[0]. It did not cause any nuclear danger. | | On the other hand, the costs grew because the standards | for risk grew to tremendous levels that are way, way | above those applied for the coal and gas industries, or | wind and solar for that matter. | | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix#Rocke | t_attack | asib wrote: | > Despite that, the public opinion soured so bad, that it | is the detractors that had to bring disaster to nuclear | reactors. Protestors fired rocket-propelled grenades at a | plant[0]. It did not cause any nuclear danger. | | The wiki article you linked says the plant was | unfinished. This would indicate the attack was a protest | against the construction of the plant, not an attempt to | induce a nuclear meltdown. You are perhaps | unintentionally twisting the facts. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | Besides, in France we've had "protest" attacks even | against chip foundries. I would assume it par for the | course for a nuclear plant. | orangeoxidation wrote: | > They continued building up their nuclear power plants | well into the 1990s but failed to bring construction | costs and delays down like your comment suggests. | | Absolutely true. It proved expensive even at large scale | and with full support of the state. I don't trust | promises or hypotheticals of cheap nuclear power, at all. | | But here's the thing: France succeeded with decarbonizing | their electricity production. It's a pretty notable | success. Yes, it was (and remains) expensive and yes | those plants are now failing often, remaining expensive | ober their whole lifetime. But it worked and France could | afford it. | | I'd argue many other countries could afford it as well. | The German electricity mix is a lot dirtier by | comparison. | morning_gelato wrote: | >This shows that Nuclear power might actually be a | hindrance towards an electrified future, as governments | have historically put to much faith in it, which was | ultimately unwarranted, instead of investing in | renewables. | | Historically the countries that invested in nuclear and | hydro have been most successful in lowering the carbon | intensity of their energy sector. Looking at the data, | Germany does not appear to be nearly as successful as | France. In 2021 France's electricity averaged 68 | gCO2/kWh, and Germany averaged 364 gCO2/kWh. | | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/low-carbon-share- | energy?t... | | https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/carbon-intensity- | electric... | pyrale wrote: | > They continued building up their nuclear power plants | well into the 1990s but failed to bring construction | costs and delays down like your comment suggests. | | > In fact if we take Germany as a counter-example, when | they stopped building nuclear power plants due to popular | demand, they significantly increased renewable energy to | a point where they are currently replacing coal power at | a greater rate then France, despite Germany actively | shutting down nuclear plants that still had years of life | left. | | Rarely have I seen reality mistreated so blatantly. | | France has barely used coal in the last 4 decades, and so | it seems to be enough to claim that, by slowly reducing | their coal use, Germany does much better. | | That reminds me of the popular definition of chutzpah: | the person that asks for mercy after murdering his | parents, since, afterall, he's now an orphan. | | > However, my main point still stands, that investing in | nuclear well into the 1990s did not bring costs and | delays of new plants down. | | Your main point is wrong. [1] shows that each model has | experienced faster build time as new units were built. | What is true is that new, more advanced designs can take | more time to build than older, less advanced designs. | | [1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_r%C3%A9acteu | rs_nucl%... | jjoonathan wrote: | > governments have historically put to much faith in it | | If we (US) hadn't stopped building nuclear in the 80s and | had instead merely key up the pace, our grid wouldn't be | 20% nuclear like it is today, it would be 100% nuclear. | | Instead, we made the choice to pump 20 gigatons of carbon | into the atmosphere while we waited for solar and wind to | become viable. I'm glad they finally are -- they just | broke into double digits, in a few years they will pass | the nuclear buildout we stopped in the 80s -- but that | was one helluva waiting cost. | [deleted] | runarberg wrote: | This is false dichotomy. The US government also had the | option of investing in renewables as early as the 1970s. | They simply didn't. The success of Germany's recent | investment suggests that was a wrong choice. | scoopertrooper wrote: | In fairness solar efficiency was below 10% in the 1970s, | while the world was already producing many gigawatts of | nuclear energy at that time. | | It's not as though Germany could have 'decided' in the | 1970s to have 2022 technology. Sure, increased investment | at the time may have sped up the development of | renewables, but it still wouldn't be fast. Science | doesn't quite work that way. | andrewmutz wrote: | Do you have a source on the France vs Germany thing? | | France uses 20x less coal than Germany to begin with | (https://www.worldometers.info/coal/coal-consumption-by- | count...) so I'm not sure about the comparison of | reducing consumption | | Also, during the recent conflict with Russia, Germany is | turning coal plants back online and France is not. | Redoubts wrote: | > they are currently replacing coal power at a greater | rate then France, | | Germany is like 40% coal, and France is maybe 5%. It's | easier to reduce at a faster rate when your use is still | massive. | [deleted] | The_Double wrote: | > they are currently replacing coal power at a greater | rate then France, despite Germany actively shutting down | nuclear plants that still had years of life left. | | That sounds a less impressive when you rephrase it as | saying they went from 15x more coal use than france to 9x | as much. Percentage wise the decrease seems similar in | the last few years. | | source: https://www.iea.org/countries/france | https://www.iea.org/countries/germany | Maursault wrote: | > Imagine a world where economies of scale bring nuclear | power down to the cost of fuel and maintenance. | | Economies of scale were applied from the inception of | commercial nuclear power, yet the promise of electricity | too cheap to meter has never materialized. Quite the | opposite. In fact, nuclear has always been the most | expensive method of generating electricity, and the anti- | nukes don't enter into it. Even if every individual on the | planet was pro-nuke, it would still be too expensive. If it | was otherwise, nothing whatsoever could prevent investors | from coming out of the woodwork to fulfill your dream of | nuclear power plants everywhere. Make nuclear energy | economical and you can have all the nuclear power plants | you want, as well as being absurdly wealthy. But when you | fail, try to avoid blaming anything other than nuclear | energy itself. | Godel_unicode wrote: | None of this is true in Japan, you might want to read up | about the cost scaling that's happened there. | | The short version is, you need to have enough generations | of reactor building to allow later projects to benefit | from previous learnings. Because of various outside | effects (this is a euphemism for the anti-nuke lobby) | that type of iterative improvement and workforce skilling | didn't happen in other countries. | nojvek wrote: | Do you have source for nuclear energy is "too expensive"? | Melatonic wrote: | The other problem is that the anti nuke crowd had a point | back in the day - they were wrong about Nuclear not being | safe theoretically - but they were right about a few | asshole corporations doing things too cheaply. | m463 wrote: | exactly, especially when you read wikipedia's article on | energy density: material specific energy | w*h/kg ----------- ---------------------- | uranium 22,394,000,000 ... diesel fuel | 12,666 | [deleted] | andbberger wrote: | we really oughta let the navy run the power grid | NavinF wrote: | My libertarian knee jerk reaction was "fuck that". But then | again, it can't possibly be worse than PG&E so... sure why | not. | [deleted] | samstave wrote: | OK - lemme express a weird view that is politically divisive | for some reason and an environmental bullshit. | | --- | | Lets speak seriously. | | Nuclear power should be managed by a global entity that is | separate from nation-states/any-government. | | GO FUCK YOURSELF THE NAY-SAYERS | | --- | | Humanity as a species may not survive unless we solve power and | food. | | This has to be a global thing. Power failure is what is going | to extinct humans. | | Due to the failures in education!!!!!!! | | Tell me how to make a pen Tell me how to survey for minreals | that are required for making [MATERIAL](steel, copper, gold, | blah blah) | | --- | | So we have built an entire world behind ignorance to how said | world is built. | | So, | | A globally independant power/data network is needed. States can | still keep MAD assurances as the infra would cripple all | involved. | | MAD isnt nuke. | | MAD is DATA. | ksidudwbw wrote: | And that reactor has also tested and proven reliability. Quirks | have been evened out | [deleted] | mwattsun wrote: | We never had a single problem with it in the years I was on | board. There were few moving parts besides the control rods | and a few valves. When I stood watch on the steam throttle | the reactor power would spike when I opened the throttle up. | I tell my kids I've controlled a nuclear chain reaction with | my bare hands. | omginternets wrote: | How long did you serve? When you say "never had a single | problem", are you being literal? | | I'm abstractly aware that nuclear technology is reliable, | but your anecdote somehow makes it more relatable. You've | piqued my curiosity :) | lnsru wrote: | I really don't understand this reliability question. | There was Fukushima and Chernobyl in my lifetime. | Fukushima got earthquake and tsunami at the same time. | Shit happens. I have no opinion about Chernobyl since it | was in a country with extremely poor working culture. But | otherwise in my opinion nuclear power plant is just | another piece of big machinery. Comparable to | semiconductor fab. They have there enough of interesting | gases to gas whole population of the next city. But it | never happened yet. | omginternets wrote: | I suspect the reason you don't understand is because | you're unaware of the reliability issues and health risks | associated with the alternatives. | smegger001 wrote: | you mean like the literal tons of radioactive waste sent | into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons? | sitkack wrote: | > extremely poor working culture | | You should do some research on what the actual flaw was | in both the reactor and the test that the crew was doing. | Attributing it to "poor working culture" sounds bigoted. | mwattsun wrote: | I was on the sub for three years. I am not aware that we | had any incidents with the reactor. We had a pipe break | and start to flood the sub, but that wasn't nuclear | related. In the shipyard we had an incident where the | neutron detector pegged high but it was determined to be | caused by TIG welding. | | https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/job- | knowledge... | omginternets wrote: | >We had a pipe break and start to flood the sub, but that | wasn't nuclear related. | | That sounds absolutely terrifying. How did you guys end | up fixing it? | | >In the shipyard we had an incident where the neutron | detector pegged high but it was determined to be caused | by TIG welding. | | Neat! :) | c3534l wrote: | This makes me think the navy now has something better, so | they're loosening the reigns on last-gen nuclear technology. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | Military reactors run on very highly enriched fuel, nearly | weapons grade. That dramatically increases proliferation | concerns when you're talking about large fleets of civilian | reactors. | | I'm rooting for NuScale, but so far every attempt at realizing | the SMR dream has failed, so I'd caution people about thinking | this is a pure slam dunk and it's just some sort of mass | stupidity keeping the technology back. | Retric wrote: | Cost is a larger issue than proliferation. Civilian nuclear | reactors care a lot more about fuel costs than military | reactors do and highly enriched uranium just costs more. | shepherdjerred wrote: | What danger is there with proliferation? Does it really | matter when the US has thousands of nuclear weapons? | nsxwolf wrote: | Yeah I never quite got this. We can have Putin say "you'd | better let me kill whoever I want or I'll destroy the | entire world", but we can't have power plants. | apendleton wrote: | Obviously a very US-oriented perspective, but: yes, to the | extent that the US has historically attempted at least | sometimes to be a global police power, they're | significantly constrained when the country they're trying | to police has nuclear weapons. The US response to Russia | invading Ukraine has been fundamentally different in kind | from, say, Iraq invading Kuwait, in which Iraqi forces were | pushed back to the border in a matter of days. There are | lots of reasons for this (much greater asymmetry in | conventional military forces, etc.), but at least in part | this is because of US concerns that direct conflict with | Russia would escalate to nuclear war. Similarly, can | already start to see how US posture towards North Korea is | starting to change and will likely continue to do so as a | result of their nuclear advancement. | antioppressor wrote: | Sure, terrorists will rummage around these and steal the fuel | rods. Then they somehow figure out how to make a | thermonuclear weapon. | | "Standard LWR fuel in 17 x 17 configuration, each assembly 2 | meters (~ 6 ft.) in length; up to 24-month refueling cycle | with fuel enriched at less than 5 percent" | Retric wrote: | Proliferation among nations is also a concern not just | terrorists. | MichaelCollins wrote: | Frankly, I think the most dangerous countries have | nuclear weapons already. I mean of course those countries | prone to starting imperialistic wars, threatening their | neighbors, apartheid, etc. | danans wrote: | > I could never understand why we didn't build these for | civilian use (cost I figured) | | If Nuscale can hit their LCOE goal of $65/mWh by 2030, they | will still be 2-3x the LCOE of Solar+storage today [1] (which | will only get cheaper). | | In the long term both technologies will play an important role, | but the zero carbon technology we can deploy at scale today is | the technology we need today. | | 1. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of- | energy-... | scythe wrote: | It appears that the LCOE for utility-scale solar which you're | referencing here, community and rooftop both being | significantly more expensive, is based on existing | installations. But existing installations would have used the | cheapest available land, and the cheapest available land | tends to be in short supply. Solar installations on a | significantly larger scale would have to use less ideal land | (less accessible, more rugged, more expensive) and would | incur associated cost increases. Solar is like a huge orange | tree where we have been mostly picking from the lower | branches -- there are more than enough oranges on the tree | for everyone, but you can't expect them all to be as easy as | the low-hanging fruit. | | However, I am optimistic about storage, particularly since | zinc-bromine seems poised to break into the market, with | excellent resource availability. Zinc production is about 13 | Mt/yr [1], and the battery offers about 67 Wh/kg, with ~1/3 | the weight in zinc, so 200 Wh/(kg Zn), so potential | production is over 1 TWh/year before running into | availability problems. There are also about half a billion | tonnes of bromine in the Dead Sea alone [2]. (Since this is | my third Zn-Br post, I'll add that I don't currently have | investments in them, but I'm considering it.) | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc#Production | | 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromine#Occurrence_and_produ | ct... | gmkiv wrote: | The link you provide seems to say that the cost of wholesale | PV + storage is $85-$158 (bottom figure, line 3). Am I | misreading that? | | I've noticed that many solar+storage installations these days | are 4-hour storage, so not sufficient for baseload. I think | the number would be higher if we were shooting for baseload | from our storage. | Swenrekcah wrote: | Nuclear uses far less resources and land area than both wind | and solar plus storage. So sure, it costs some more money but | it costs less actual real stuff. | | Furthermore, it is not feasible to power individual personal | vehicles or homes with nuclear reactors, so using nuclear for | the grid frees up those resources that can be used for other | stuff, for that stuff. | Ma8ee wrote: | You do know that you can exchange money for "actual real | stuff", including natural resources and land? So that why | we cite costs in "money". | lumost wrote: | Land use is a substantial concern for renewables and | energy storage. We pay for electricity in marginal | dollars. Currently we are building solar in low | cost/utilization land. At some point prior to full | rollout of renewables, this "cheap" land will run out. | Swenrekcah wrote: | We cite costs in money because it's useful. But you can't | eat money and you can't build from it. You need actual | stuff and land to do so. That is limited in a way that | the money supply isn't. | | Case in point, the currently ongoing global supply | shortage. | Manuel_D wrote: | There's no viable way to build storage at the scale required | to run a wind and solar grid. Even building just 1 hour of | electricity storage amounts to 2,500 GWh. The entire world's | annual output of battery storage is somewhere between 300 and | 400 GWh. Any attempt at grid scale storage would lead to | shortages driving up prices. | | Similar bottlenecks occur with pumped hydroelectricity. To | build it economically you not only need an alpine lake handy, | it also needs to be close to transportation infrastructure. | As those sites are developed, we'd turn to more and more | remote sites. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I think this is an area where industrial policy should play a | serious role. | | I am firmly against a technology with such a unequal | downside/upside ratio. It's not that nuclear fission is | _inherently_ unsafe, it 's just that every reactor needs to be | playing it's A game every day. | | We need to be lucky every day, mother nature only needs to be | lucky once. | | Maybe, maybe we can treat these as giant durcell batteries and | use them for five years then seal it in concrete on site. But | that does not seem to be the play here - so all the recycling and | transport and handling just scales up - and it costs to be on | your A game. The US military might afford this. but even they | will probably want to run down the costs in the next few decades. | annexrichmond wrote: | > We need to be lucky every day, mother nature only needs to be | lucky once. | | Sounds more like a slogan than an argument | sgc wrote: | It's also a terrible attitude to an engineering and | operations challenge. What is this dark box of 'luck'? We | know the potential concerns, and can design and act | accordingly. | CharlesW wrote: | > _I am firmly against a technology with such a unequal | downside /upside ratio._ | | I'm very curious what you're basing this opinion on. | | https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy | haroldp wrote: | > it's just that every reactor needs to be playing it's A game | every day. | | That is not necessarily true of modern reactor designs. | Reactors can be designed so that neglect by the operators, loss | of coolant and other failures result in the reaction passively | coasting to a halt. | jeffbee wrote: | Many of the supposed guarantees are valid only in the absence | of water and/or oxygen intrusion into the core, which are | huge caveats here on planet Earth. | sroussey wrote: | This is the big difference between most of the large deployed | reactors and the modern designs. | | Which leads me to an idea: a power plant divided into four | parts, where each part starts construction on 1/3 the | eventual power using the newest designs every decade. They | run for 30 years. Then deconstruct and rebuild the last one | with the newest design. | | This would incentivize a continuous market for new designs | over the next century. | jeffbee wrote: | "Deconstruct" is doing a _lot_ of work here. Nobody knows | how to take apart fission reactors promptly after they are | shut down at the end of their economic life. All we know | how to do is wait many years for activity levels to | decline, then incrementally remove materials starting with | the least contaminated, which itself takes decades. The | materials can only be recycled into other nuclear | facilities, which means that essentially none of this | material _has_ been recycled, because nobody is building. | jefftk wrote: | " _they 're structured in a way to allow passive safety, where | no operator actions are necessary to shut the reactor down if | problems occur._" | p1mrx wrote: | > it's just that every reactor needs to be playing it's A game | every day. | | What if you start by assuming failure, and then account for | that by operating your reactors under millions of gallons of | emergency cooling water? That is NuScale's approach. | wanderr wrote: | Overall what I understand of NuScale's approach seems to | account for most everything that can go wrong. But what | happens if there is a natural disaster that causes much of | that water to leak away quickly? Is there a failsafe for that | as well? | p1mrx wrote: | What natural disaster could quickly drain a "lake" lined | with stainless steel? All that water needs somewhere to go. | | I assume a straightforward geological study would prevent | events like | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/22/man-dies- | after... | omginternets wrote: | >It's not that nuclear fission is inherently unsafe, it's just | that every reactor needs to be playing it's A game every day. | | The second half of your sentence is literally arguing that | fission is inherently unsafe. Which is it? | | You have two choices: | | 1. Fission is inherently unsafe: then why do the numbers | contradict you? | | 2. Fission is not inherently unsafe: then what's the problem? | helloworld11 wrote: | And 40 years later, after dozens of billions or more spent, | someone might just be allowed to finally build an amazingly | clunky, drastically bloated up version of it that has been | finally approved by a myriad storm of shifting regulations and | unhappy contrary interests. | capableweb wrote: | Which, hopefully, because of all these regulations and | bureaucracy, won't have any issues that will cause (again) a | meltdown of the public opinion about nuclear reactors. If some | serious accident happens with something like this, be prepared | to wait another 40 years before anyone dares to propose nuclear | energy again. | epistasis wrote: | Though public opinion and regulations might be a barrier too, | there's a more elementary and fundamental problem around | nuclear: cost and time. | | Even France, without the regulatory or public opinion | problems, is having difficulty building nuclear, and the | construction project at Flamanville is an unmitigated | disaster, just exactly the same as the US's recent projects | at Vogtle and Summer. | | And that's the reason that SMR designs are even being | attempted. The design has always been rejected in the past as | uneconomical. But with large reactor design proven to | uneconomical, and a huge devotion to nuclear among some, SMRs | are giving it a go again. | | If nuclear worked well, there are always populations that | welcome them nearby. Most, but not all, of our current 100GW | has supportive neighbors. | | But I always find it curious that these lesser problems of | public support and regulations get so much more attention | than a far more fundamental problem: economic efficiency. | GolfPopper wrote: | It's not just the approval process. The late Admiral Rickover | may have put it best, | | _"An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the | following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is | small. (3) It is cheap (4) It is light. (5) It can be built | very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose ('omnibus | reactor'). (7) Very little development is required. It will use | mostly off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the | study phase. It is not being built now. | | "On the other hand, a practical reactor plant can be | distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being | built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It is requiring an | immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. | Corrosion, in particular, is a problem. (4) It is very | expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of the | engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is | heavy. (8) It is complicated."_ | raverbashing wrote: | Could be. But I think reactors suffer from the same "NASA | Problem" (and also some dose of second-system syndrome) as | rockets | | > It is requiring an immense amount of development on | apparently trivial items. Corrosion, in particular, is a | problem. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time | to build because of the engineering development problems. (6) | It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated." | | Correct. That's why you design once and build multiple ones | | How did SpaceX manage to get the costs down? | | Re-prioritizing is also important. Safety of course should be | the main issue. But I suspect most current designs focus too | much on efficiency and max power as well. | p1mrx wrote: | "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, | but when there is nothing left to take away." | | How would you "bloat up" a reactor that uses passive | convection, submerged in millions of gallons of emergency | cooling water? | | Light Water Reactors aren't the ideal way to generate nuclear | energy, but they're proven technology, and it's hard to imagine | a safer LWR design than what NuScale is planning. | WarOnPrivacy wrote: | Some numbers. | | NuScale says their nuclear power module (NPM) output capacity is | 77 MW (gross) [1]. | | NuScale says their plant designs can combine up to 12 NPMs for | 924 MW total output [2]. | | One megawatt can power 400-1000 homes [3]. | | [1] https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview | | [2] https://www.nuscalepower.com/about-us/faq#T2 | | [3] https://www.betterhomelab.com/how-many-homes-can-1-mw-power/ | blacksmith_tb wrote: | Those numbers look excellent, but we'll need to see the | pricetag for a dozen, and also if they can be rolled off the | line rapidly. | zbrozek wrote: | I think siting challenges and getting permitting approvals | are likely to drive costs to non-competitiveness even if the | reactor is free. And that's a terrible shame since the | factory-built approach makes so much sense and our need for | clean, reliable base load is so dire. Europe could really use | quite a few boatloads of these reactors _right now_. | SnowHill9902 wrote: | Generation is just part of that. High-power interconnection is | a difficult and expensive problem. | adrianmonk wrote: | Part of NuScale's concept is that these can be installed at | sites of decommissioned coal plants: | | https://www.nuscalepower.com/environment/coal-plants | | And the grid already has good connections to those sites. | | Whether that actually can be done is another question. Many | people want traditional nuclear located as far away as | possible from populated areas, but with coal they aren't as | picky about location. | | NuScale's version of nuclear is supposed to be much safer, | but who knows if that will put people at ease enough that it | can be put wherever is convenient. | bobthepanda wrote: | What's interesting is that these are actually getting used | for solar and wind projects today for mostly the same | reason (connection to the grid that exists; new | transmission takes years to come online if it ever does) | | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/climate/coal-plants- | renew... | benevol wrote: | How about we certify clean AND free energy? | https://www.KryonEngine.org | sedatk wrote: | Wow, the sarcastic and judgemental language in the FAQ for a | perfectly legitimate question says it all. It's borderline "how | can your little brain not understand that..." and yet fails to | answer it. Another "magnets, but this time it works" perpetual | motion BS. | | Quote: | | > But I've been told that free energy is impossible because of | the Law of Thermodynamics. | | > Does your mental flexibility allow for the scenario where the | KryonEngine doesn't actually break this law? Can you imagine | that there actually is no energy "coming out of nowhere"? Can | you imagine that this "new" energy has in reality always been | there, and we simply haven't been able to perceive it, because | we haven't been taught how and where to look and measure? Don't | stay trapped inside mental prison cells somebody else has built | for you. | Tildey wrote: | I was waiting for the part where it indicates that it's | satire, but it never came | bogdanu wrote: | NuScale is planning to install a few of them in Europe too. | According to local news, the first EURO one will be installed in | Romania. | mountainriver wrote: | As a complete novice, this could be a game changer? | | The ability to centralize the production I imagine radically | reduces the cost, or at least has the potential to. | | With all the energy challenges we face, could the US government | subsidize a program like this and make it a silver bullet? | mapmeld wrote: | Yes. When I attended an IAEA Safeguards conference in 2018, | there were a number of these civilian nuclear battery designs | but none had been built. A small nuclear battery can replace | building-size diesel generators which remote communities and | islands, data centers, etc. currently use as a primary or | backup power source. | ethbr0 wrote: | I learned on HN that we almost did this in the 1970s, albeit | with large but modular reactors. The effort extended far into | construction of the (very large!) factory facility. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31467070 | TheDudeMan wrote: | Yes, this is huge, IMO. | pydry wrote: | Depends what it costs. Since the article neglected to give a | figure, Im pretty skeptical it's going to be competitive. | LinuxBender wrote: | This video [1] talks about some of the potential cost savings | and reduction in time to deployment. There is one being | installed near me so I guess time will tell how realistic the | projections are. | | [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxXlD4e-wTE | wjnc wrote: | $ 3 billion for 720 MW of power (2019 figure) [1]. More | recent figure of $ 5.5 cents per KW/h [2]. So about 4x cost | overrun leeway to be competitive in Europe. That seems | manageable? | | [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/smaller-safer- | cheape... | | [2] https://www.nucnet.org/news/first-customer-has-set-lcoe- | targ... | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | > costs | | 1 Fukushima is too many, no? | omginternets wrote: | You should look up the cost (in whatever metric you like: | dollars, lives, cancers, etc.) and compare it to coal. | Don't forget to normalize, since coal is _much_ more common | than nuclear power. | | The results will likely surprise you. | luckylion wrote: | No. Fukushima is a price I'd gladly pay and I expect every | reasonable person to agree. | | The alternative isn't "no Fukushima", the alternative is | hundreds of thousands deaths per year by burning coal. It's | just not "one huge bang" so people don't realize it, | because understanding abstract dangers is hard. | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | Just improve decentralized energy storage and micro- | grids. | panick21_ wrote: | It cuts both ways. You lose the scale, but its more modular. | | Putting a conventional PWR in such a modular system isn't a | silver bullet and has you to be proven to actually be cheaper | and a game changer. | | If you simply want 1.5GW it might be simpler to just put a | single PWR there rather then like 5 of them. | | I would say real GenIV modular reactors are the silver bullet, | this is a step in the right direction. | Melting_Harps wrote: | Interesting, Rolls Royce is doing the same in the UK and have | been working on this since last year [0]. | | After having dealt with SONGS not long after Fukushima and seeing | first hand the long-term adverse effects of Chernobyl in Europe I | became anti-nuclear, but in time I realize that in reality what I | was actually anti 20th Century nuclear business model and the | corrupt regulatory frame work as most were built haphazardly in | locations with immense inherit pitfalls, coupled with poor long- | term logistical and waste management planning and ignored | continuous warnings to decommission--TEPCO stated that the | Fukushima disaster was entirely avoidable. | | And that is what I think still needs to addressed, because the | regulatory capture of these agencies poses a much bigger issue | than these small reactors do, which are seemingly promising | solutions to contribute to the World's energy needs. | | 0: https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular- | reactor... | dang wrote: | Related: | | _Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety | approval_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24358850 - Sept | 2020 (541 comments) | | _NuScale's small nuclear reactor is first to get US safety | approval_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345288 - Sept | 2020 (5 comments) | | _Nuclear Commission Approves a Safety Aspect of NuScale Power's | Advanced Reactor_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16225386 | - Jan 2018 (47 comments) | lucidguppy wrote: | The less operators have to worry about the better. Its harder to | cut corners when there are less corners to cut. | jonnycomputer wrote: | that's why i prefer that my nuclear reactors be spherical. | MerelyMortal wrote: | We're halfway there! On the horizontal plain, this one is | spherical. | [deleted] | smolder wrote: | Circular, I'm sure you meant. | p10jkle wrote: | 1-sphere | projektfu wrote: | These could be used to create a real "smart grid" where very | local variations are smoothed out among various reactors, with | some battery storage for peaking. So long as people are willing | to live near them. | pas wrote: | People's attitude is quite plyable, it depends on what the | group/party they currently follow (feel part of) tells them. | lven wrote: | Not exactly. Nuclear reactors have a difficult time following | the load because of Xenon poisoning. Xenon generated during the | fission reactions absorbs neutrons that could have been used | for fissions. Luckily, it decays away over time. If you turn | down the reactor power, you have to wait hours or day for for | Xenon buildup to decay so that you can turn the reactor back | on. Some reactors manage to load follow more easily by adding | lots of excess reactivity (more potent control rods) which is | less safe overall. Smaller reactors will have the exact same | issue. The amount of Xenon poisoning is proportional to the | power density. NuScale reactors run at even higher power | density than normal light water reactors, so they will have | even worse Xenon poisoning. They won't be load following. One | exception where this isn't true is micro gas-cooled reactors | that have so low a power density that they have negligible | xenon poisoning and can follow loads easily if necessary. Even | then, it's not a great idea because of thermal cycling issues. | panick21_ wrote: | Some reactors can also more effectively let xenon escape. | That is one of the reasons why Alvin Weinberg wanted a liquid | molten salt reactor, you can let the xenon bubble out like | CO2 in a soft drink. | Manuel_D wrote: | Nuclear can modulate it's output by more aggressively cooling | the water. There's no xenon poisoning since the reactors | output is the same. This is undesirable because it's | essentially wasting fuel, by deliberately reducing the | efficiency of the steam turbine. But it can be done, and fuel | is not a big driver of nuclear cost. | mikece wrote: | Outstanding! Instead of 300MW coal or gas-fired plants in metro | areas we could have clusters of these. The shorter transmission | distance will mean less line-loss, the factory-built design means | economies of scale, and the passive-cooling post-scram ability | means that it would be impossible to have a Fukushima type of | accident due to loss of primary loop cooling. If every city | acquire enough of these to cover 80% of their base load then we | could cut carbon emissions so fast we it would astonish us all. | kadonoishi wrote: | Yeah. I'd note the need for a centralized fuel supplier, as you | don't want hundreds of little municipal nuclear plants trying | independently to dispose of the waste. Have a centralized | "library" of nuclear fuel, where the plants "check out" the | fuel and then turn it in when spent. The centralized authority | can concentrate expertise on the issues of sourcing uranium, | tracking where it is, then disposing of it safely. The small | plants are then freed to focus on running the actual plant and | providing reliable electricity to their cities. | panick21_ wrote: | While this is an overall good development, and I wish the company | luck. Its really not the solution. | | While scale is what killed nuclear, the people who initially | decided on scale, did so for good reason. You lose a huge amount | if you scale down, specially with PWRs. | | These small PWRs try to get some of that efficiency back with | factory production, but at best it just evens out. The advantage | is the added flexibility. So I don't think that putting | traditional PWR in a tube is really any kind of series solution | to transform our energy system. | | However there are good things coming out of this. For example, | NuScale went threw a process managing multiple reactors from the | same control room. That is the same thing that essentially all | GenIV reactors want to do as well. Having managed to get that | concept threw the regulator will make it massively easier for | anybody that follows. | | Its a damn shame that we don't have GenIV reactors since the 80s. | We had the technology and every reason to use it. We could be | living in a nuclear age right now, and I consider it the largest | failure of humanity that we failed to do so. People in 100 years | will look back and think we were insane that we did not use the | technology we discovered. | reaperducer wrote: | Is disposal of nuclear reactor waste products a solved problem | yet? | | Last I heard, the big "solution" was to stick it in sacred | Native American mountains in Nevada and New Mexico and let | future generations worry about it. | | If that's all we can do, people in 100, 200, 300 years may not | be thinking what you're thinking they will think. | p1mrx wrote: | https://www.deepisolation.com/ looks like a reasonable | solution, assuming we don't use the waste as fuel. | | Why would future generations have to worry about something | buried deep underground? Just don't drill there. | RealityVoid wrote: | Why would they not be thinking that? It's inaccessible and | geologically stable. | | Besides, if we don't tackle the global warming problem, there | might not _be_ generations 300 years down the line to judge | our actions. | troyvit wrote: | Yeah there will. We're like rats: easy to kill as | individuals but pretty hard to stamp out en masse. | gcanyon wrote: | One thing to remember is that while the half-life of a very | small portion of the waste from nuclear reactors is measured | in thousands of years, so it's important not to release it | into the environment, the half-life of the mercury that is | absolutely released by coal mining is...infinite. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | > " solution" was to stick it in sacred Native American | mountains in Nevada | | Is your objection due to the sanctity of the mountain or | another reason? | antupis wrote: | Here Finland Onkalo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_sp | ent_nuclear_fuel_re... is going opetational 23 and it will | basically solve it for us. | AareyBaba wrote: | Dispelling the Myths of Nuclear Energy | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1QmB5bW_WQ | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | > Last I heard, the big "solution" was to stick it in sacred | Native American mountains in Nevada and New Mexico and let | future generations worry about it. | | Sorry, but given that the climate catastrophe is the most | pressing concern for humanity, I think that gives more weight | that religious superstition over the "sanctity" of a mountain | in the middle of the desert miles from any humans. | | Securing nuclear waste to decay at the bottom of a mountain | is a pretty good solution, the only thing against it really | is political nimbyism. | briandear wrote: | There is no climate catastrophe. That's simply a modern | version of the superstition you lament. The end of the | world is always conveniently just 12 years away. I'm old | enough to remember the Prophesy of Al Gore (peace be upon | him) and how none of that came to pass. 2009: "the North | Pole will be ice free by 2013." I also remember the dire | predictions of acid rain, the ozone hole, and numerous | other proclamations that stirred up the anti-capitalist | faithful. | | There's always some sort of catastrophe just looming just | over the horizon of the next election. Televangelists have | made careers from warning the faithful that their doom is | assured -- unless you reprint (and contribute.) The climate | alarmist crowd has taken pages right out of the tent- | revival handbook of the 19th century. Snake oil. | ikrenji wrote: | mega droughts, record heat waves, wildfires, more | numerous and violent storms of all kind but sure there is | no problem with the climate. shaping the climate doesn't | happen overnight and if no action is taken now the world | will be very different in 50-100 years. just because | dinosaurs lived on a hotter earth doesn't mean than 10 | billion people can comfort at do so too ... | puppable wrote: | The only reason you're not hearing about the acid rain or | the ozone hole anymore are because decisive international | action was taken to stop both, and wouldn't you know it, | it worked. And, are you really "old enough to remember" a | single politician mis-stating a climate forecast during a | speech, or are you just "old enough to remember" seeing | it repackaged into a meme on social media a decade or so | after the fact? Either way, it is an asinine basis for | your leading claim. | otikik wrote: | The world is a very complex system and it is of course | logical that people will not be completely accurate in | their numbers and dates. | | > the North Pole will be ice free by 2013 | | The tendency is unmissable if you look at the data[1]. | People might have been wrong about the exact date at | which it would happen, but you should not let the | exactitude of the date distract you. It will eventually | happen (unless something changes drastically). | | And we honestly don't know how the weather will behave on | an iceless Earth. Some people speculate that the arctic | ice is a sort of heat shield. It makes some sense | intuitively: all that white ice reflects a lot of heat | back up. Once it is gone... the blue water will absorb | and accumulate more heat. | | > I also remember the dire predictions of acid rain, the | ozone hole, and numerous other proclamations that stirred | up the anti-capitalist faithful. | | Everyone is starting to feel the change, it's no longer | "just words". If you have not started yet you will start | feeling it soon. | | In my country (Spain), this summer we have had 3 | heatwaves in a row, as well as two very unusual clouds of | Sahara dust, the first of which reached Finland. I was | born in the south of Spain, were's the hottest. When I | was little the max summer temp used to be 41 degrees | Celsius (105F). Now it's 47C(116F). Max temperatures have | increased through the Iberian Peninsula, 41C is "the new | normal" in all places except some coastal fortunates and | some very northern regions. My options for escaping the | summer heat are dwindling. | | In the United States my understanding is that the most | visible exponent is the extreme drought, in particular | the water levels in the Colorado river basin seems | worrisome. You might find more information about where | you live in [2]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline | | [2] https://www.drought.gov | reaperducer wrote: | _the only thing against it really is political nimbyism_ | | Actually, from what I've read in the local newspapers in | the areas affected, the politicians are all for it, so | you're making assumptions there. | | The people who are against it are the people who actually | have to live with the stuff for the next thousand years. | | If it's so safe, so stable, so easily rendered harmless, | why not bury it in the bedrock beneath Manhattan, or | Boston, or Virginia? All places that are far more | geologically stable than, for example, Yucca Mountain. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Abundance of caution, defense in depth. | | If nobody lives there, nobody has to live with it. | troyvit wrote: | Political nimbyism is what put the waste where it is. It | ended up in the back yard of the least powerful political | force in America. Curating nuclear waste for longer than | any human can actually comprehend isn't something to just | brush off. You'd be trading one climate catastrophe for | another. | | And that doesn't even account for securely transporting the | waste across the country. Imagine scaling nuclear to the | size of coal. What does waste transport look like then? | | Maybe this waste belongs precisely in the back yards of | those of us who create it. Then we'd be truly careful. | jfim wrote: | Keep in mind that the US is generating about 20x the | amount of high level nuclear waste than if it were to | recycle spent fuel. The French do it, but Americans | won't. | Brybry wrote: | I think nuclear is already scaled to the size of coal. | | Electricity generation by source in the US in 2021: | | Coal - 21.8% | | Nuclear - 18.9% | | [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 | lttlrck wrote: | Whereas the emissions from fossil fuels are spread | uncontained for everyone to enjoy? | otikik wrote: | All of the used fuel ever produced by the commercial nuclear | industry since the late 1950s would cover a whole football | field to a height of approximately 10 yards | | Solar and Wind require a backup for when there's no wind or | it's cloudy. Their current default backup is burning fossil | fuels. | | Of those, coal plans are particularly salient because they | _do_ generate radioactive waste. Continuously. And pour it | over the atmosphere. They contribute far more radiation to | the environment than nuclear power stations. | | > let future generations worry about it. | | I think they will appreciate having to worry about that in | exchange of not having to deal with not existing because of | climate change. | omginternets wrote: | Is the disposal of coal, gas and oil emissions a solved | problem yet? At least nuclear waste is contained. | sitkack wrote: | How is it "not the solution". Having 50MW of base load being | able to be deployed anywhere could allow for everything else | covered by renewables. | | If I were a poor remote county and I wanted to make sure that | | 1) my residents emergency needs were covered hospital, | sanitation, water, emergency heating, etc | | 2) also had access to cheap power | | Having one of these provide the base load for critical infra | allows one to shop around for cheap renewable power wherever it | may come from. | Manuel_D wrote: | Nuclear reactor output scales with volume but cost scales | with surface area. So a larger plant is more efficient. | | If the smaller reactors can take advantage of easier | fabrication and logistics they might be cheaper, but that is | an unknown. | sitkack wrote: | Efficiency is only one dimension, these reactors can be | distributed to the point of use. Efficiency should be | measured in its local universe. | MrDresden wrote: | Knowing nothing about the intricacies of building nuclear power | plants, but agreeing whole heartedly with you that humanity | dropped the ball when it came to advancing the tech and | construction of large scale plants, I am hoping this will have | a positive effect. | | Large scale plant construction is hard, takes a long time and | the knowhow is disappearing (see recent issues in France with | their latest project). | | With a miniaturized plant the time to market is quicker, which | hopefully will start having a positive effect on peoples | opinions sooner when it comes to nuclear power. | | It may not be optimal, but it has the potential of changing | things for the better. | zdragnar wrote: | The bigger the plant, the more customization it needs, to the | point of every individual plant needing independent design | certification. | | Smaller plants can be produced faster with lower overhead, | because the consistent design reduces risks. | pas wrote: | Large scale is not inherently hard, the problem is lack of | industrialization (lack of economies of scale). The "West" | after the Cold War went all in on short-term-ism (both fueled | by market liberalization, financialization of everything, | globalization, plus as a consequence of all this the | political gridlock that ensued). | ip26 wrote: | They are so big and complex they have paradoxically lost | advantages of scale. Allegedly, if you build two of the same | nuke, it's actually more expensive to build the second one | because you have to do a whole bunch of change orders to adapt | the existing design to a completely different site. | [deleted] | belorn wrote: | I can see two large use cases for small PWR at this point in | time even if the price per watt is similar/higher than large | reactors. One is the exact same argument for why small PWR was | installed in submarines, that is replacing diesel generators | that operate 24/7. Those still exist in some locations and | situations, and diesel generators that operate 24/7 are very | dirty and require a lot of fuel to be transported. They could | in theory also displace backup generators if multiple locations | require uninterruptible power and each has an expensive diesel | generators that require testing every week/month or so. Not | sure if there exist studies done on emissions from backup | generators at hospitals, but I am pretty sure I read about the | problem somewhere. | | The second big use case would be Europe right now. If small PWR | can be produced fast, like say within a year, those could be | economical viable. The energy price for next winter is | predicted (depending on which gloom and doom you read) to reach | around 2x to 20x compared to the record prices of last year. | Such prices can make a lot of technology economical viable, and | a big factor will then be product availability. | galangalalgol wrote: | Could Europe even use electricity to heat? I assumed the gas | was mostly being used directly in gas furnaces. Heat pumps | are only just getting to where they can work in extreme cold | right? | wbl wrote: | We can make more heat pumps and Europe is pretty warm | compared to the Midwest in winter. | galangalalgol wrote: | But making and installing a significant number of them | before winter temperatures hit seems extremely hard. | mmaurizi wrote: | Being able to shut down existing gas power plants should | free up a lot of gas for home heating. | Manuel_D wrote: | France uses electricity for most of its heating, thanks to | it's extensive nuclear power. | brtkdotse wrote: | At least in Sweden the vast majority of single family homes | are heated via geothermal/air-to-water heat pumps (which | run on electricity) | credit_guy wrote: | > try to get some of that efficiency back with factory | production, but at best it just evens out. | | It's not just factory production. | | There's a lot of savings from just scaling down the design. | Currently the pressure vessels for a typical large reactor (the | AP1000) are build using forges that weigh (take a moment to | appreciate the number) 15 thousand tons [1]. No such forges | exist in the US. | | Truth is, NuScale plans to source their pressure vessels from | one of the existing vessel manufacturers, the South Korean | Doosan [2]. However, it is very likely that their vessel can be | produced with much smaller forges, and in time more | manufacturers will have the capability to build it. | | [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear- | fuel-c... | | [2] https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/doosan-to-make- | pres... | stevenjgarner wrote: | I remember during my undergraduate physics years at the | University of Otago, we had a visiting guest speaker - I think it | was Dale Bridenbaugh around 1976 when he had resigned as a | manager in GE's nuclear division worried that their plants were | not safe [0]. He had just also toured Australia as a guest | speaker toward the anti-uranium effort [1]. | | At the time, Robert Muldoon was Prime Minister of New Zealand and | was pursuing "think big" projects for NZ including a planned | nuclear power station. As one of the "GE Three" [2], Bridenbaugh | blew the whistle that the quoted price tag of the power plant did | not include necessary safety precautions which he eloquently | explained would cost at least an order of magnitude more (greater | than the GDP of NZ). Of course the whole idea made no sense in a | country blessed with hydro and geothermal resources. In the end | the project was abandoned for total cost of ownership budget | reasons rather than nuclear issues. | | I wonder what has changed since then? | | [0] https://www.times.org/nuclear-power-back/2018/3/8/the- | long-t... | | [1] https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82alternatives.html | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three | yellow_lead wrote: | The design maybe? This quote from the article may be a part of | it | | > In addition, they're structured in a way to allow passive | safety, where no operator actions are necessary to shut the | reactor down if problems occur. | peteradio wrote: | I wonder what strategies need to be employed to feel | confident that you have even surfaced all the problems. | Presumably there is a list of unmitigatable problems or worst | defended attack vectors. But that is probably the hidden | success of our last century, that and tight machine | tolerances it's everywhere. | aunty_helen wrote: | To be fair, if they did go ahead we would've had decades less | coal burning and potentially could've provided electricity | cheap enough in combination with hydro and renewables that | would've seen some big industry shift away from burning coal. | | NZ has a very green power grid but it's not perfect and suffers | from reliability issues dependent on snowfall to fill the hydro | lakes. Nuclear would have and still could provide a lot more | security in that area. | | I'm hoping NZ sees the light and accepts small nuclear as a | decent method of going to 100% green sources (currently it's | 85%) | cormacrelf wrote: | I feel like the biggest benefit of small nuclear is that it | can be put anywhere and you don't have to build extremely | costly transmission infrastructure. Just dot these things | around. It surely isn't cost-effective enough for the first | 85% or whatever of a state's needs, but for that last mile | problem? Sounds good. | fatcat500 wrote: | Safetyism in regards to nuclear power is nothing more than the | environmental lobby attempting to derail the only viable | solution to climate change. They will lose an excellent source | of political capital if climate change is solved, so they will | always fearmonger nuclear power. | | Fewer than 50 people have died from nuclear power in its entire | history, meanwhile an estimated 8.7 million people die each | year from fossil fuels [0]. | | [0] https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-are-the- | ef... | namdnay wrote: | Ah yes, it's a sinister plot by the evil "environmental | lobby"... | | No, it's just that the roots of the green movement are mixed | with the nuclear disarmament movement, and the rejection of | nuclear unfortunately got carried on to civilian power plants | :( | polotics wrote: | I wish there were a way to both upvote and downvote your | post: | | The environmental lobby does not exist, but pressure from | NatGas producers to "orient" the Greens towards fear of NP | did & does. | | However the idea that climate change is political capital for | them is ludicrous: clearly their activism totally failed... | _dain_ wrote: | >The environmental lobby does not exist, | | does the renewable industry magically not have the same | politico-economic incentives to lobby politicians like | every other industry? | [deleted] | nightski wrote: | Cost always comes up around nuclear, and maybe justifiably so, | but I think it shouldn't be such a large factor. The U.S. for | example could easily afford this. We just passed a $700B bill | for clean energy and heavily subsidize oil & gas. | | What matters more imo is reliability and energy security and in | those respects nuclear makes me a lot more confident than | renewables such as solar or wind. | stevenjgarner wrote: | The problem with all these costs is that we only get to know | the real costs in hindsight. | | With oil and gas, the hidden cost was climate change. | Although global climate change was imagined as early as 1896 | by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius [1], it was not | publicly acknowledged by the "7 Sisters" [2] until April 2014 | [3]. We think we know what oil and gas costs with what we pay | at the pump, but those costs usually miss the $500 billion in | direct subsidies [4], the military costs of protecting those | interests and of course the costs of neutralizing climate | change. | | With nuclear, the hidden cost is both long-term storage of | waste and the cost of nuclear accidents. The merchants of | nuclear power plants do not list those costs on the sale | price. Again we get the sticker shock once it is too big to | fail. I still have not met anyone who is prepared to have | nuclear waste stored in their "neighborhood" for the next | thousands of years. So it accumulates on-site, where there | was no real planned long-term storage accommodation. | | I'm not arguing for or against one form of energy. Rather I | am arguing for more transparency in our presentation of the | costs. | | [1] https://www.livescience.com/humans-first-warned-about- | climat... | | [2] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(oil_companies) | | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_c | ont... | | [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiCvGQnweAg | concordDance wrote: | > With nuclear, the hidden cost is both long-term storage | of waste and the cost of nuclear accidents. | | Long term storage is actually trivial, just requires | actually storing it. | | Counterintuitively, best way is glassing it and dumping it | on the abyssal plane in the sea. | | This controls the temperature and acts as a radiation | shield and there's more a hundred times more life on the | surface than in the abyss. Also, no humans who get prissy | about 1 in 100 chances of cancer than animals don't fare | about. The ocean's also big enough that a your case | corroding and some material being dissolved and spreading | in the water is irrelevant (unless all your nuclear waste | you ever dump manages to escape and spread throughout the | ocean rather than just sit in a sullen pile you'll be under | EPA limits). | visarga wrote: | > Counterintuitively, best way is glassing it and dumping | it on the abyssal plane in the sea. | | That's how you make Godzilla! | panick21_ wrote: | > long-term storage of waste and the cost of nuclear | accidents. The merchants of nuclear power plants do not | list those costs on the sale price. | | Actually they do. The US has been collecting money from | nuclear plants for disposal for literally 50 years. | | In fact, they have an absurd amount of money since this | money has been collecting interest. It it political | deadlock and systematic incompetence that prevents the | solving of this problem. | | And in addition, long term storage is an incredibly dumb | solution for most of this 'waste' and is a fundamentally | flawed policy that again, is simply systematic | incompetence. | | > I still have not met anyone who is prepared to have | nuclear waste stored in their "neighborhood" | | Disagree, put it in my garden. I don't care. You can leave | it there for the next 100 years. Seriously, its not hard to | store, it just stands there and does nothing and is 100% | harmless unless you come up with some plot of Armageddon | style logic. | | > So it accumulates on-site, where there was no real | planned long-term storage accommodation. | | Its accumulates on-site because of systematic incompetence | in the federal government. | | > and the cost of nuclear accidents | | The likely hood of such accidents is incredibly small, even | if you assume 100 years of nuclear power for 100% of the | population the chance of really series accidents is very | low. And even lower if we consider next generation nuclear. | eric-hu wrote: | Firstly, I applaud your YIMBYism. | | Secondly, regarding waste, I share your view, and I think | there's an additional travesty that we've had breeder | reactor technology for decades. That can significantly | shorten the volume and half life of waste while also | producing new nuclear fuel. Non proliferation concerns | are cited for why it's not used, but I don't see why | America can't operate them within its own borders. | amanaplanacanal wrote: | I believe most waste isn't spent fuel but rather other | contaminated stuff, which isn't going to be helped by | breeder reactors. | jtc331 wrote: | My understanding is most of this waste also isn't as | dangerous or as long-lasting. | Manuel_D wrote: | Waste is an incredibly easy problem to solve: bury it in | impermeable bedrock. That said, there's no real point in | storing existing nuclear waste since we don't reprocess our | fuel. So the existing waste is a source of fuel in the | future. | | Solar and wind should also be transparent in the fact they | require fossil fuels to fill in gaps in production. Thus, | they do not represent a solution to climate change but | merely delay it. Thus the cost of solar and wind includes | the cost of climate disaster. | anonporridge wrote: | There's some kind of logical fallacy in this line of argument, | but I can't put my finger on a name for it. | | It's situations where the emotional terror of acute risks | forces you to default to a behavior that has less tractable, | long term, systemic risks. Mitigating the acute risks is too | expensive, so instead, you accept being the frog boiled alive | because long term risks are harder to quantify and more | nebulously terrifying. You're terrified of a nuclear meltdown, | so instead you subject global civilization to decades of | unnecessary fossil fuel burning. A nuclear meltdown that kills | hundreds or thousands is terrifying, but coal burning that | quietly kills millions from air pollution is silent. | | Other examples... | | * When you're terrified of Covid, so you suspend most of your | activities and spend two years mostly staying home, gaining 50 | pounds and decimating your fitness which drastically increases | your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall significantly | increasing your likelihood of dying young far in excess of the | acute risk that Covid actually posed to your demographic. | | * When we're so scared as a society of the Covid death spike | that we stunt the social and educational development of | children by years, which is potentially unrecoverable. | | * When a small group of religious radicals kill 3000 people in | a fantastical way, so you set yourself on a trillion dollar war | to lose thousands more of your young people to combat deaths | and directly and indirectly kill hundreds of thousands of poor | foreigners, coming away not practically any safer than the | basic changes to airline security policies would have done for | a fraction of the dollar and human life costs. | woodruffw wrote: | The key distinction here is that the (low!) long-term risk of | nuclear power is well quantified, while COVID represents an | unknown long-term risk. | sdsaga12 wrote: | Isn't this true of all new strains of all contagious | pathogens? They are constantly undergoing change. We | estimate low probability that mutated viruses or bacteria | descended from strains we are familiar with will have | dramatically more harmful long-term effects, but we don't | actually know for certain that any given year's new strains | won't have very different risk profiles until much later. | We can make probabilistic models based on historical data, | but they are unavoidably vulnerable to underestimating the | risk of black swan events. | | One could argue that certain features of covid make it | riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not a | proposition that is well developed in the public | conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis | hypothesis. The lab origin hypothesis with its accompanying | assumptions of serial passage and direct gene modification | would in my eyes strengthen the case that covid's long-term | effects were less likely to conform to historical data on | other viral infections, though interestingly the | intersection of those who find the lab origin more | convincing with those who have serious concerns about long- | term harms is a pretty small set. | woodruffw wrote: | > Isn't this true of all new strains of all contagious | pathogens? | | Yes. The distinguishing factor there is that most new | strains do not kill millions of people within the first | year or two of discovery. Compare, for example, the H1N1 | variant that caused the 2009 flu pandemic, which killed | "only" around 300,000 people (based on best excess death | estimates). | | > One could argue that certain features of covid make it | riskier with regard to long-term effects, but that is not | a proposition that is well developed in the public | conversation, especially by proponents of the zoonosis | hypothesis. | | This has _long_ been an established part of the | messaging: we 're more or less confident that short term | effects to young, otherwise healthy individuals are | minor. The guidance has _still_ been to avoid infection, | because we 're not confident that mild short term | guarantee or protect against serious long term effects. | Chickenpox (and subsequently shingles) exemplify this. | | I understand the intuition that a non-zoonotic origin | would lend credence to the possibility of long term | risks, but I don't think the epidemiology actually | supports the intuition: my understanding is that viruses | that jump the species gap tend to have higher | _variability_ in terms of their harm to the new species. | peteradio wrote: | I've noticed the same strange misaligned covid | explanation/behavior. Lab leak would make me more fearful | of the virus itself, pure zoonotic origin and I say Jesus | take the wheel and by that I mean countless generations | of evolution tuning my immune system against similar | virus for familial survival take the wheel. | woodruffw wrote: | This mis-states the relationship between your immune | system and novel viruses, especially ones that cross | species boundaries. Viruses adapt to _avoid_ the | adjustments the immune system makes, and zoonotic | transmission means that your immune system is "seeing" | all kinds of novel adaptations for the first time. | pydry wrote: | >You're terrified of a nuclear meltdown, so instead you | subject global civilization to decades of unnecessary fossil | fuel burning. | | It's kind of fair enough to be afraid with a chances of | meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years: | | https://lemielleux.com/what-are-the-chances-of-a-nuclear- | pow... | | Those odds are why not a single insurance company will insure | a nuclear reactor for more than 0.3% the cost of a nuclear | disaster. | | Speaking of fallacies, your argument squarely falls under the | false dilemma fallacy. Nuclear is not the _only_ form of | green energy. In fact it is by far the most expensive one as | well as the only one that imparts a small chance of | catastrophe. | | It isnt needed to provide reliable power either. Wind, solar, | pumped storage, batteries and demand shaping can, together, | do it cheaper: | | https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3539703-no- | mi... | | https://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/anu- | finds-530000-potent... | p1mrx wrote: | > chances of meltdown projected at 1/3704 reactor years | | That is for _existing_ reactors. The point of new designs | is to do better: | | "The likelihood of core damage due to NuScale reactor | equipment failures while at full power conditions is 1 | event per module every ~3 Billion Years." | | https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/safety- | features/emerge... | pydry wrote: | And I'll _believe_ it once the price-anderson cap is | eliminated and they can still buy insurance. | | Otherwise it's all talk. Manufacturers will _always_ | claim on that their product is 99.9% safe. | | The closest realistic measure is how much financial | liability their insurer is willing to shoulder and at | what cost. | | Which is _still_ capped at 0.03% of 1 fukushima in the US | because the government thinks pushing it any higher would | spook them. | serf wrote: | to be clear : the events of 9/11 were the _impetus_ for war; | not the motivation. | | that trillion estimate, one of the lower ones by the way, is | a cost figure without the associated profits and revenue. As | horrible as it is and was, the 'military industrial complex', | as a whole, profited incredibly -- this 'trickled down', a | phrase I hate to use , all across the United States in the | form of jobs from market players and call-for-bids across the | nation to fill in niche topics (like airport security, for | example) that were otherwise un-worked beforehand. | | Another aside : the proof that airport security has changed | anything for the better is scant at best, and corrupt at | worst. | | tl;dr : if you think any of the wars in the middle east were | fought for the sake of 'American Safety', whatever that might | be, then you're just not paying enough attention. | SiempreViernes wrote: | I mean, a trillion spent is a trillion spent: it'll trickle | down regardless of how you spend it, the question is if you | could have spent it some other way that would have given | more jobs? | namdnay wrote: | It was Bush - if it hadn't been spent on Iraq it would | have gone straight to tax cuts for the upper brackets. | | We're talking about the guy who managed to tank the | worlds healthiest budget | Jenk wrote: | Not if it is stashed away secretly avoiding tax and other | contributions to society. | | https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/23/su | per... | majormajor wrote: | > * When we're so scared as a society of the Covid death | spike that we stunt the social and educational development of | children by years, which is potentially unrecoverable. | | This sounds a lot like "we should ignore warnings about | pollution because the cost of moving away from fossil fuels | would be too expensive," actually. | | Picking such an open-ended thing like this really undermines | your point here. You want people's Covid-prompted behaviors | (exaggerated into stuff like "two years mostly staying home, | gaining 50 pounds") to be compared to "fear of nuclear | meltdown." But you can't substantiate those long-term risks | in anything like the same way we can those of burning coal at | this point. Is Covid more "potentially unrecoverable" for | kids and young adults than themselves or family members being | drafted for a world war and dying en masse? Than school | shootings that we tolerate for vague "protect our liberty" | talk? | iforgotpassword wrote: | > It's situations where the emotional terror of acute risks | forces you to default to a behavior that has less tractable, | long term, systemic risks. | | Good thing nuclear doesn't produce hazardous waste we need to | store safely for thousands of years. That would be a pretty | horrible, long term risk. | | But OTOH who gives a fsck about generations to come, storing | the waste safely while I'm still alive should be doable. | [deleted] | Jenk wrote: | > When you're terrified of Covid, so you suspend most of your | activities and spend two years mostly staying home, gaining | 50 pounds and decimating your fitness which drastically | increases your risk of cardiovascular disease and overall | significantly increasing your likelihood of dying young far | in excess of the acute risk that Covid actually posed to your | demographic. | | This example (that I suspect you shoe-horned in to rant) | undermines, but also fully demonstrates, your entire point | because you've just casually and conveniently ignored the | reduced risk _to society as a whole_. I.e., those actually | vulnerable from getting sick in the first instance, but | further still overwhelming the health and welfare services to | the detriment of *everybody*. | | But also reeks of FY;GM. | peteradio wrote: | Why so offended to suggest that some people could have | overdone it to the overall negative? Parent isn't | necessarily suggesting that the reaction was the typical | one. | kadonoishi wrote: | > There's some kind of logical fallacy in this line of | argument, but I can't put my finger on a name for it. | | "Cowardice"? From an old version of the Wikipedia article, | "Fear and excessive self-concern lead one to not do things of | benefit to oneself and one's group" [0] | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowardice | WaitWaitWha wrote: | For those who are interested in the size (will it fit in my | garage/car port?) | | The picture in the article is a _NuScale Power Small Modular | Power_ plant[0]. | | > Each NuScale reactor vessel is expected to be 9 feet (2.7 m) in | diameter and 65 feet (20 m) tall, weighing 650 short tons (590 | metric tons). | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power | tbihl wrote: | The tallness is pretty important to the design and is pretty | much antithetical to everything about home design. | quantumwannabe wrote: | Or people will just have a nuclear tower on their lawn. If it | can be buried (or partially buried), the tower need not be | taller than the house. With some decorations similar to the | ones on cell phone towers, it could even look reasonably | attractive. | titzer wrote: | Back of the envelope, 60MW is 30,000 homes. So a small city | or very large town could install just a couple of these and | be completely set. | p1mrx wrote: | Except for Lord Farquaad's castle. | aperson_hello wrote: | The 60MW seems a bit more antithetical to home design than | the height! That's a not-small amount of power. | titzer wrote: | Those dogecoins aren't going to mine themselves. | plasticchris wrote: | No but it sounds about right to supply a large parking | garage (or three!) of charging EVs. | pnw wrote: | The Nuscale design requires that the reactors are submerged | in a below ground pool. | spacehunt wrote: | Perhaps for individual detached houses; 20m can easily fit | inside apartment buildings... | hypersoar wrote: | Note that the reactor vessel doesn't generate electricity, but | _steam_. You need a turbine to make it useful. Once you include | that, it doesn 't look quite as miniature[0]. As far as I can | tell, these aren't targeted at anything other than utility- | scale power. | | [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU-IlqiP4sU&t=63s | Seattle3503 wrote: | Could it be moved via a standard tractor trailer? | aperson_hello wrote: | This suggests it can be shipped by truck (though probably not | a standard trailer, as it's not light): | https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview | WheatM wrote: | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: | This may be for the best. The size alone would make it a no-go | for average homeowner. I am saying this, because while I am | sure there are plenty that know what they are doing on their | property, there is a substantial non-zero amount of those that | do not. And, separately, can you even begin to imagine that | non-zero amount demanding that they have remote access to it | via their favorite app? | | All I can think of is Snowcrash and multiple sovereigns. | DisjointedHunt wrote: | This thing could power a small town, it doesn't need to fit | in your lawn. | | Micro grids with multiple redundancies make the size perfect | for a community project. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-30 23:00 UTC)