Took long enough

[Trbo323]

So I have to ask… how bad is it when there is a catastrophic failure (meltdown)? What level of radiation is there? What is the worse case scenario? I'm not against this at all. But until there is zero possibility of radiation/contamination beyond unsafe/normal background levels in any possible failure situation, this is questionable at best. I'm excited to hear this is being worked on and making good progress. I'm all for energy independence, either personal or national, but I certainly have my concerns about safety of a commercial micro-reactor if it's not truly 110% safe.

There's designs out there that have failsafes already, the problem is most nuclear regulatory commissions (especially the US which basically sets the momentum for the rest of the world) are too scared to actually try something new they won't approve them thats why we really haven't built new reactors in 40 years.

There was a test reactor built in the 90s that had a completely automated failsafe system. If the reactor started going critical, all the humans could, and did for a test, take their hands off the controls and the system automatically shut itself down.

Did it get built as a full scale? Hell no. Chernobyl was too fresh on everyone's mind and it apparently didn't matter that that reactor didn't have any kind of containment dome and was a poor design that was mismanaged. It had the word "nuclear" in it and so does this new reactor so they are the same thing in the public and politicians eyes. It didn't matter that this reactor was also built as a way for the US to say "hey look what we can build, it shuts itself down". Fear made the decision at the end of the day

More recently, and this is all mathematically proven territory but nobody can get the authority to build any of these there's some designs that rely on physics instead of control rods and computers.

The two I saw the most promise in both used liquid fuel, basically you have the fuel as a liquid with the control rods dipped into it. But the reactor is built in such a way that the bottom of the reactor has a plug in it. If the fuel liquid ever gets too hot it melts the plug and drains into a wide cavern. When the fuel spreads out in the cavern it physically can't react as much because the atoms become too far apart so just by physics it shuts itself down.

The other was along the same lines but the liquid fuel, when it got hot enough would expand enough that the atoms became too far apart to react. It was basically a self regulating system that couldn't go critical unless you forced it into a contained space. If you let it expand it's safe.

Hell, we were all set to have yuka mountain be the national nuclear waste disposal site, so instead of having nuclear waste at each reactor spread out all over the nation it would all be trucked to yuka mountain and held in one spot and it was also going to be studied there. From what I remember it was mostly built and ready to go and then people got cold feet and the plug got pulled so now we still have nuclear waste just sitting at most reactor sites being guarded by chain link fences rather than a mountain with a single entrance

As for the article above, mass production of nuclear reactors has been done and I'm pretty sure the first people to do it was France. They standardized their reactor design and started pumping them out in the 60s or 70s I think At one point France was something like 70-80% powered by those reactors im not sure what it is today. Ever heard of a nuclear incident in France? Me either. They could train you on one design and then plug you in anywhere. It made training, troubleshooting, running etc way easier. Even if you had a freak accident and all of a single plants operators died in a tour bus accident you could pull one operator from a handful of other plants and assemble an already trained crew. Really smart way to do it.





Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[DocsMachine]

The issue isn’t radiation as a thing or risk as a thing. Those are obviously everywhere in nature. So much so that we can stop bringing that up over and over like it’s a relevant observation.

-Says the guy about to go on saying the risk is everything.

The issue is creating the greatest risk possible and then using it to put as many people at risk as possible.

-How blatantly ignorant.

There's over four hundred operating nuclear reactors worldwide, and I'm not sure that number includes ships or subs. When's the last time you heard of an accident?

If Fukushima can melt down then ANY plant ANYWHERE can melt down.

-More willful ignorance. The Fukushima plant operated almost entirely without incident from when it was commissioned in 1971. It only failed after being flooded by a monster tsunami caused by a once-in-a-lifetime 9.1 earthquake.

And even then it survived. The ultimate failure was caused when electrical power to cooling pumps was lost. Grid power was damaged and the on-site generators flooded.

AND... that's an obsolete 1960s design, which required active monitoring and feedback. Again, modern designs, as noted, can be and are self-regulating in a number of different ways.

It’s not about the technology. It’s about how the technology works in the human world. And this stuff doesn’t.

-Sorry, that's just your rather surprisingly ignorant opinion. The technology does work, and works well- and is by several orders of magnitude, the absolute most powerful energy source on this planet. And, if such things concern you, entirely "carbon neutral".

There are no other choices.

Doc.

[Trbo323]

There's really only been 4 nuclear incidents in history

1) Chernobyl, a poor design WITHOUT a containment dome that was managed by people more concerned about their position than public safety. While the nearby town of prypyat was never inhabited again most people don't realize that the other reactors at Chernobyl were operated until 2000

2) three mile island, a faulty valve and signal sent to the control room combined to release some radiation. The radiation release was fairly minimal as no isotopes were dispersed like Chernobyl. The reactor here had a containment dome and the result was a partial meltdown

3) Fukushima, as stated above the real problem was the loss of cooling water to the reactors, the design problem was placing the backup generators below ground basically guaranteeing them to flood. The containment domes did their jobs and radiation levels at the site returned to background levels in 2011.

4) I forget it's name but it was a military test reactor. Fairly small, only had 2 operators on site. Alarms went off, large spike in radiation and no communication told the military nearby that there was a problem. They go to investigate and find one of the operators dead at the site, apparently from radiation poisoning. The second they can't find. His car is there but I think it was a whole day later that someone finally looked up in the reactor room and found him skewered into the ceiling by a control rod. He had apparently been trying to insert a control rod into the reactor when it went hot and flash boiled enough water to shoot the control rod out like a missile. I believe there was a meltdown here but the reactor was so small and was somewhere like the middle of a desert that there really wasn't danger to anyone outside of it. (That's all from memory, I researched this back in college, pieces could easily be wrong)


But that's it. Chernobyl obviously being the worst the lack of a containment dome really made a huge difference in the scale of fallout after the event. Even with these 4 events added together nuclear is by far the safest form of mass power generation.

I feel like a good comparison is flight. In the 1980s flying was still safe compared to cars but much more dangerous compared to flying today. I feel like that's where nuclear power was. All the reactor designs from the 60s are like jets from the 80s. There were flaws and we have learned from them, the difference is aircraft continued to be built with the new safer designs in mind and it's way safer today than it ever was. Nuclear, we learned the lessons but have not had the opportunity to implement them because everyone is so scared


Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[Pyrate Jim]

4) I forget it's name but it was a military test reactor. Fairly small, only had 2 operators on site. Alarms went off, large spike in radiation and no communication told the military nearby that there was a problem. They go to investigate and find one of the operators dead at the site, apparently from radiation poisoning. The second they can't find. His car is there but I think it was a whole day later that someone finally looked up in the reactor room and found him skewered into the ceiling by a control rod. He had apparently been trying to insert a control rod into the reactor when it went hot and flash boiled enough water to shoot the control rod out like a missile. I believe there was a meltdown here but the reactor was so small and was somewhere like the middle of a desert that there really wasn't danger to anyone outside of it. (That's all from memory, I researched this back in college, pieces could easily be wrong)

The SL-1 salt reactor in 1961.
SL-1 Reactor Explosion: The Nuclear Disaster Nobody Talks About | Watch

Also.
Molten salt reactors were trouble in the 1960s—and they remain trouble today - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

[DocsMachine]

There were flaws and we have learned from them, the difference is aircraft continued to be built with the new safer designs in mind and it's way safer today than it ever was. Nuclear, we learned the lessons but have not had the opportunity to implement them because everyone is so scared

-This. Right here.

What happened was Three Mile Island came right on the heels of the movie The China Syndrome, which was about a nuke plant having a major safety issue and it being covered up.

At the time, "global warming" wasn't a thing (indeed, only a few years before, there were fears of an oncoming ice age ) and coal was cheap, plentiful and seen as a LOT safer. Whenever somebody wanted to put in a nuke plant, after the movie, the lawsuits started up- nobody wanted such a 'deathtrap' in their backyard.

It got to the point where it cost billions just to clear the paperwork and fight five to ten years worth of lawsuits, before the first shovelful of dirt was dug up. I seem to recall reading that a utility wanted to re-start construction on a plant that had been mothballed in the concrete-foundation stage back in the 70s or 80s. I think President Obama got involved, and helped things along- but supposedly they had ten billion dollars tied up in suits and paperwork before the first workman arrived on site to start doing the actual work.

So naturally, no new reactors were made for some forty years. We kept using coal and gas for all that time. If carbon emissions are a concern of yours, think about that for a bit. Where would we be today if, say, thirty percent of the last forty years worth of carbon emissions had been offset- that is, not emitted- thanks to carbon-neutral nuke plants? Where would reactor technology be, today, with an additional forty years of research and development?

And it's only now that behemoth companies like Google and Microsoft need monstrous amounts of electricity to power their AI datacenters- power that cannot be obtained in any other way on earth- that the tide is starting to turn.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

The SL-1 salt reactor in 1961.

-Just as an anecdote, the Soviets had sub reactors cooled by molten lead.

Doc.

[Trbo323]

-Just as an anecdote, the Soviets had sub reactors cooled by molten lead.

Doc.

Seems like a fine choice. I see no health hazard to the plant workers at all

Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[Pyrate Jim]

We may need these small reactors sooner than you think.
United Nations | World Court Warns: Climate Change Is an ‘Existential Threat’ to Humanity | N18G

ICJ states burning coal is a ‘wrongful act’ which requires reparations to be paid

[Sneak Miester]

After eating my wife’s chili my asshole feels like a nuclear reactor.

[Pyrate Jim]

Still interested?

Federal regulators clear pathway for shuttered Michigan nuclear plant to restart

Energy company strikes deal to deliver next-gen nuclear power to critical US military base: 'We are honored'

[Pyrate Jim]

How about fusion?
Wisconsin's Clean Energy Future: The Rise of Fusion Reactors | Watch

[Sneak Miester]

we should use dilithium crystals
dilithium is a highly valuable crystalline mineral. These crystals regulate the energy from matter-antimatter reactions

[Pyrate Jim]

Some folks here seem to be missing the point.
I'm talking about a viable technology that is already in practice.
We have fission reactors, small, portable, mounted on ships. Can we not have the same on land?
Advancing toward fusion control is the next step of a learning process. Already progressing.

When I was young, there was only black & white television. Now we have artificial intelligence.
Speaking historically, that is perhaps the greatest amount of technological achievement in a single lifetime.

It's been proved that nuclear energy production does work.
You don't see massive cooling towers on a submarine.

[flyweightnate]

I think the major point is easily missed by most people.

Material is free. All cost is energy.

Obviously, that's not completely true, but it's about 99.9% true if you look at any problem long enough. Cars? The energy to mine the iron ore, mine the bauxite, crack the petroleum, run the presses, run the welders, etc. You can "skip" any part of the process by buying a material from a processor at a given rate, but that rate is, in effect, the processor's energy use.

BEVs? Well, that same metric applies. The energy to mine the lithium, mine the cobalt, mine the silver... the sad part is with certain minerals, the energy is in human form, still, and in a functioning society would include the cost of the energy of doctors to heal the disease caused by the chemicals... but I digress. Most of the added cost of a BEV is in the form of energy spent mining, or energy spent building batteries. At scale, research is borderline irrelevant.

Fusion reactions? Well, energy in has to include the infrastructure around the reaction. Not yet viable. Improving regularly.

Fission? This is one of few cases where energy extracted is greater than energy input. Fossil fuels being the other. Even solar, wind, etc. are right on the edge when you consider full lifecycle cost, especially "recycling" (or burying) the leftovers when they inevitably fail early. (Of course, I live in Texas, where hailstorms eat solar farms for breakfast, and I've heard some craaaazy stuff about the wind sector from some colleagues who are intimately involved.)

So I'm excited to see implementation at scale - reduced energy cost is the fastest, most sure way to lift a people's standard of living, by systemically reducing real cost of all goods and services not involving exclusively manpower. Sure, there are some hurdles, but as others have stated, it's not like we don't know how to do fission. Fukushima and Chernobyl have caused far less death and destruction and pollution than the aggregated fossil powerplant (and related infrastructure) failures elsewhere in the same period, even on a per GWh basis, less widespread contamination than solar, and certainly less environmental damage than wind. I'm bullish on it.

[Siress]

Everything is energy. We live in a simulation programmed in the language of energy. I too am bullish on reasonably safe nuclear power. Thorium-based was the last I really looked into, and it baffles me that we haven't been using it for the last decade.

[Pyrate Jim]

That may be your point. My point is that the article the OP posted and the follow up fusion one are disposable clickbait that with zero skepticism or thought repeat the press releases of go nowhere startup companies and that if anyone has the attention span for it they can check back on their lack of progress month by month and maybe keep them in mind the next time someone says The Future Is Now and start looking more for proof than promises.

Like the Green New Deal. How many promises? How much product?
Disposable clickbait or not, it at least shows that the concept has not been forgotten and someone somewhere is working on a practical solution.
What's more it is private commercial enterprises footing the cost. Entrepreneurs and investors looking to make a profit.
Not like Gov't freely spending taxpayer dollars promising 50,000 EV charging stations across the Nation for the good of the environment.
For the cost of 50,000 units, we ended up receiving seven total. That future is now.

Like I said in the first post, students were tasked with the issue 50 years ago.
The mechanics are no more complicated than a steam engine locomotive. The only difference is the heat source to boil water efficiently.