[HN Gopher] Nuclear lighthouses built by the Soviets in the Arct...
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Nuclear lighthouses built by the Soviets in the Arctic [video]
Author : etimberg
Score : 453 points
Date : 2021-01-07 20:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| woutgaze wrote:
| For a very good writeup by the organization Bellona, which is
| also in the video see https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-
| issues/radioactive-waste-an...
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| How do I download this video (with the subtitles if possible)?
| Youtube-DL doesn't help.
| xfer wrote:
| You can find the mpd stream and the subtitle in network tab.
|
| For me: youtube-dl.exe -f bestvideo+bestaudio "https://vod-
| dash-ww-live.akamaized.net/usp/auth/vod/piff_abr..."
|
| And the subtitle(EBU-TT-D format): https://vod-sub-ww-
| live.bbcfmt.s.llnwi.net/iplayer/subtitles...
|
| Vlc can play it with the sub.
| discordance wrote:
| In the village of Lia, Georgia, on December 2, 2001, Three
| lumberjacks discovered two 90Sr cores from Soviet radioisotope
| thermoelectric generators. These were of the Beta-M type, built
| in the 80s, with an activity of 1295 TBq each. The lumberjacks
| were scavenging the forest for firewood, when they came across
| two metal cylinders melting snow within a one meter radius laying
| in the road. They picked up these objects to use as personal
| heaters, sleeping with their backs to them. All lumberjacks
| sought medical attention individually, and were treated for
| radiation injuries. One patient, DN-1, was seriously injured and
| required multiple skin grafts. After 893 days in the hospital, he
| was declared dead after a fever caused by complications and
| infections of a radiation ulcer on the subject's back. The
| disposal team consisted of 25 men who were restricted to a
| maximum of 2 minutes worth of exposure (max. 20mSv) each while
| transferring the canisters to lead-lined drums.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_radiation_acc...
| pininja wrote:
| I happened to watch a short documentary about this yesterday on
| Plainly Difficult. A lot of great videos on this channel.
| https://youtu.be/23kemyXcbXo
| WatchDog wrote:
| I've also watched it, and a few other videos on the channel.
| Frankly, his videos just seem to be minimally editorialized
| recitals of wikipedia pages.
|
| For someone that has made so many videos on nuclear
| accidents, he seems to have a pretty poor understanding of
| nuclear radiation and contamination.
|
| His "plainly difficult" disaster scale is all over the place,
| for example, the texas city disaster, which killed >581
| people is rated as a 7, while some smoldering garbage at the
| "West Lake Landfill", rates just below it as a 6.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Heh, story straight out of the Strugatsy Brother's "Roadside
| Picnic" right there: Advanced tech (I was going to put quotes
| around it, but it really is) created by a defunct civilization
| found by people who see side-effects, but don't understand the
| functionality at all.
|
| This is like those island tribesmen imitating air controller
| hand signals, because they thought it was magic that summoned
| supply planes.
| benterris wrote:
| Here you can find a detailed report about this event, if you
| get intrigued as I did :
| https://www.iaea.org/publications/10602/the-radiological-acc...
| sradman wrote:
| > Following the accident, it was determined that eight RTGs
| [radioisotope thermoelectric generator] of the Beta M type
| had been brought into Georgia in the early 1980s to serve the
| radio relay system between the Engury hydroelectric station
| and Hudoni hydroelectric station, which was under
| construction at the time. These generators were placed in
| pairs at four substations located in areas where there were
| no other means of electrical power supply. In these
| generators, the heat generating elements were 90Sr
| radioisotope sources with an activity of 1480 TBq and a heat
| power of 250 W.
|
| > After the construction of the Hudoni hydroelectric station
| was stopped, the radio relay system lost its function, and
| the generators were left without supervision and control. By
| the end of the 1990s, the generators were disassembled, with
| the radioactive sources exposed and removed from their
| original location. Of the eight 90Sr radioactive sources,
| only six have so far been found.
| hinkley wrote:
| > The disposal team consisted of 25 men who were restricted to
| a maximum of 2 minutes worth of exposure
|
| I'm trying to figure out how that works. One team moves the
| crane and the geiger counters near the device, the next team
| brings in the lead boxes, the next team attaches the device to
| the crane, the next team puts it in the box and closes the box,
| the next team checks that the box is working, and then someone
| else puts the boxes on a truck?
| dmos62 wrote:
| The process was described here in detail: https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...
| squidlogic wrote:
| From the linked report:
|
| During the recovery operations, the following steps were
| taken:
|
| (1) The vehicle and container were positioned so the rear
| of the vehicle was close to the radioactive sources.
|
| (2) Two members of the recovery team installed stairs on
| the vehicle.
|
| (3) The recovery team was divided into two groups. The
| first was positioned in an area located 20 m from the
| radioactive sources. The second remained beyond that area
| at a safe distance from the location of the radioactive
| sources.
|
| (4) Two members of the recovery team placed the
| manipulating devices near the location of the radioactive
| sources.
|
| (5) One member of the recovery team cleared the surrounding
| area of the radioactive sources.
|
| (6) One member of the recovery team collected one of the
| radioactive sources and placed it into a special vessel.
|
| (7) Two members of the recovery team transferred the
| radioactive source in the special vessel to the vehicle.
|
| (8) Two members of the recovery team standing on the
| vehicle received the radioactive source and placed it into
| the container.
|
| (9) In the event that a recovery team member became unable
| to complete their activity (e.g. due to the dose received),
| a substitute person was ready and available.
|
| (10) The second half of the recovery team conducted the
| same actions for the second radioactive source.
|
| (11) One person conducted individual dosimetry control for
| all members of the recovery team and recorded the doses.
|
| (12) Two members of the recovery team conducted dose rate
| monitoring.
|
| (13) All actions were led by a team member assigned to give
| commands to start or to stop, according to the plan. A
| signal to stop was given to every worker after 40 s from
| the beginning of each activity, indicating replacement by
| the next worker.
|
| *edit: formatting
| dmix wrote:
| Additionally (just skimming) three members received some
| medical issues:
|
| > Following the exposure on 2 December 2001, all three
| patients exhibited in the first 24h symptoms of nausea,
| vomiting, asthenia (weakness), headaches and dizziness,
| followed by cutaneous radiation syndrome (CRS). These
| early clinical manifestations and anamnesis of the
| patients strongly indicated ARS of a haematological type
| for the three patients. Furthermore, Patient1-DN
| developed transitory oropharyngeal syndrome.
|
| The last medical condition is usually found in older
| people, making swallowing difficult:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oropharyngeal_dysphagia
|
| Also the PDF has some helpful pictures and diagrams.
| Looks like both original containers were nearly stacked
| and sideways on a rocky/hilly path, in a difficult to get
| to place.
| db48x wrote:
| Those were the three villagers who found the sources.
| They carried them to the rocks, and used them plus small
| fire to stay warm overnight.
| rfreiberger wrote:
| I believe there's a video on youtube with this, they used a
| whistle to signal when to stop and change teams. IIRC it was
| 2 minutes of exposure, followed by hour of cool off time or
| something like that.
|
| But everytime I hear this story, I got to wonder who would
| pick up an object generating heat and not question why it's
| still hot hours later?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Russian winter. These guys were looking for firewood, for a
| fire to keep warm. Cold makes people despirate. And,
| knowing a little of russian rural culture in the winter, i
| think it safe to say alcohol may have been a factor.
| passerby1 wrote:
| > In the village of Lia, Georgia
|
| It's not Russia.
| ant6n wrote:
| Does Georgia not have Russian Winters, or Russian Rural
| Culture?
| negrit wrote:
| People with no education?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| "Wondering why it's hot" doesn't necessarily imply
| "worrying whether whatever makes it hot could be
| dangerous".
|
| If you didn't know that radioactivity can cause heat, and
| you found a magic hot rock, do you think you'd go "I don't
| understand this, must be dangerous" or "I have now clue how
| this thing works but it's really useful, I'm gonna keep
| that thing"?
| hobby-coder-guy wrote:
| The first option.
| mech422 wrote:
| In today world, my default setting is pessimism - so I'd
| assume it was dangerous. I'm way past thinking 'magic' is
| harmless.
|
| However, thinking I understand something when I really
| don't will probably be the end of me :-P
| eptcyka wrote:
| I think non-{science,tech,engineering} people are a
| considerably more pessimistic about the world than the
| average.
| azernik wrote:
| Probably something like that. By comparison, for certain
| areas on the Chernobyl reactor roof where the time limit was
| 30 seconds, each person would be given a shovel, go out on
| the roof, throw a piece of graphite off the roof, then go
| back inside and hand the shovel off to the next person.
| yreg wrote:
| Was it found out how did two Beta-M type radioisotope
| thermoelectric generators got to a side of forest road?
| free652 wrote:
| Stolen most likely and abandoned when thieves got sick.
|
| >NTV reported that eight such radiothermal generators were
| brought to Georgia in the early 1980s to power relay antennas
| during construction of the Inguri and Khudoni hydroelectric
| plants, and subsequently abandoned. Six of these have now
| been recovered by Georgian authorities.[5] Despite a search,
| however, Interfax reported on 24 January 2002 that Georgian
| police and the Georgian Environment Ministry have been unable
| to find the remaining two power generators.[5] According to
| Georgian
| dismayedjim wrote:
| So glad Canada plans to litter our country with these soon.
| They want SMR's in every logging camp, remote community, mine,
| and so on. Sure they are more dangerous per GW and more costly
| per GW but they are MUCH cheaper _initially_ so small
| unqualified companies can get involved. Let the good times
| roll.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| As a Canuck I'm enthused about an increased adoption of
| nuclear energy. It's far safer than coal or oil, and is able
| to generate energy on-demand. It's a great pairing to solar,
| wind, and hydro.
| rixed wrote:
| > and is able to generate energy on-demand
|
| Last time i studied this topic one of the main drawback of
| nuclear energy was precisely that it required accurate
| forecasts of future demand, so not suitable for "on demand"
| production, because of how long it takes to cool down. Had
| anything improved in this area?
| Gwypaas wrote:
| More modern designs can ramp faster, but still not fast.
| The main issue is that the largest cost of a nuclear
| power plant is the capital investment to build it and
| staff to run it, which is fixed. In comparison fuel costs
| seem to hover at about 25%.
|
| Therefore you need to run your plant at about full power
| all day to have a chance to recoup the investment. With
| renewable, although intermittent, sources vastly
| undercutting nuclear on price many hours of the day this
| becomes an even harder calculation.
|
| Based on this nuclear is an uniquely bad pairing together
| with renewables, and it will only get worse. Say you can
| make massive profits on average one hour per day, but
| that means all other methods of energy generation of
| storage can make the same, and still undercut you.
|
| This isn't even factoring in that it is impossible to get
| insurance for a nuclear power plant.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| It sounds like it makes more sense with sufficient
| battery technologies then (which don't yet exist).
|
| Thanks for the information.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| That's a fair criticism. I don't know the numbers, but
| I'd be curious to see them. Especially around modern
| designs.
| rob74 wrote:
| > It's a great pairing to solar, wind, and hydro
|
| No it's not - to compensate for times when there is not
| enough energy from renewable sources, you need power plants
| that can be shut down and brought back online quickly, and
| nuclear plants are certainly not that.
| feb wrote:
| Nuclear power plants can vary power output quickly if
| planned during the design. As France has an installed
| capacity of more than 60 GW of nuclear power production,
| their power plants can quickly adapt their production.
| That's needed to keep the network balanced.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Incorrect, we don't need all power plants to ramp up/down
| in seconds. Energy demand of a provider during the day
| follows roughly the same curve for the specific time of
| year. Thus ramping up/down of baseload can be and is
| planned in advance. The random variations from that
| prediction can be handled by smaller number of responsive
| plants.
| pfdietz wrote:
| SMRs are not radioisotope thermal generators.
| lxe wrote:
| I think SMRs are very different from RTG. SMR is an
| essentially a small and fairly complex reactor design, like a
| molten salt reactor. It heats water or other liquid, turns it
| into steam, steam spins a turbine, just like a regular power
| plant.
|
| An RTG is just a hot piece of radioactive material surrounded
| by thermocouples that directly convert the heat into
| electricity.
| kenned3 wrote:
| i live within 10KM of pickering Nuclear. I have no concerns
| as nuclear is among the safest form of power available.
|
| A coal plant puts more radioactive isotopes into the air then
| any nuclear plant.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-
| more-...
|
| dont let the facts get in the way..
| hannasanarion wrote:
| Nuclear power plants aren't the same thing as portable
| nuclear batteries, which is what these are.
| thu2111 wrote:
| No, but risk is all relative.
|
| The video says the replacements were sometimes things
| like wind turbines. These tend to kill birds.
|
| These RTGs seem quite impressive actually. Simple and
| easy to construct, if you have a nuclear industry. They
| survived for decades of being completely abandoned in a
| society falling apart. The biggest risk was only to
| people who literally broke in and stole them. There were
| no construction accidents creating and maintaining
| endless thousands of kilometers of transmission cables,
| no dead birds or dead maintenance engineers trying to
| repair a huge non-solid-state device in the middle of a
| Russian storm, the lighthouses presumably saved many
| lives and were cheap enough to build that the embattled
| USSR could afford to do so.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if a full lifecycle cost/benefit
| analysis that took into account the alternatives ended up
| being strongly positive in favour of this technology.
| oddmiral wrote:
| Chornobyl alone put more radioactive isotopes into air than
| all coal plants combined. Don't know about ground and
| water.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| But is this an apt comparison. The soviet union was
| pretty independent from the rest of the west. I's sooner
| qualify that western/European nuclear is safe, so the
| average isn't dragged down by despotic/unstable nations.
|
| Nuclear proliferation is a worldwide concern, but a new
| power plant in your backyard is as safe as relative to
| the _national_ record.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| This statement could definitely use a source.
| drran wrote:
| For Chornobyl, I found estimate at Wikipedia: <<An early
| estimate for total nuclear fuel material released to the
| environment was 3+-1.5%; this was later revised to
| 3.5+-0.5%. This corresponds to the atmospheric emission
| of 6 tonnes (5.9 long tons; 6.6 short tons) of fragmented
| fuel.[127]>>
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Relative
| _is...
| drran wrote:
| For coal power stations:
|
| <<According to estimates by the US Oak Ridge National
| Laboratory, the world's coal-fired power stations
| currently generate waste containing around 5,000 tonnes
| of uranium and 15,000 tonnes of thorium. Collectively,
| that's over 100 times more radiation dumped into the
| environment than that released by nuclear power
| stations.>>
|
| About 1% of it is leaked into air, so about 500 tonnes of
| uranium and 1500 tonnes of thorium are leaked into air
| every year.
|
| However, uranium and thorium are much less dangerous than
| radioactive iodine, strontium, and cesium.
| mikesabbagh wrote:
| History of nuclear has taught us that nuclear is very safe
| until an accident happens. You can see Japan as the latest
| example disaster where one week before, no one imagined
| this could happen. here in Quebec, we decided to close a
| nuclear reactor after Fukushima at a cost of $2 billion
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > You can see Japan as the latest example disaster where
| one week before, no one imagined this could happen
|
| I don't accept this characterisation. I see Fukushima as
| an example of being curiously diligent in one area, and
| negligent in another, perhaps because rather than have a
| "culture" of safety it was simply legislation driven,
| such that standards dropped as soon as there was a
| gap/oversight in the legislation. To clarify - as safe as
| the plant was, it was not in a safe chosen location.
| Concerns were raised, and ignored. legislation covered
| the building and operation of the plant, not diligence in
| planning its location.
|
| security is somewhat weakest-link - it doesn't matter if
| your doors are metal with strong locks if there are large
| windows without bars. Fukushima was always unsafe, just
| conditional on a relatively rare event - by the same
| measure the unstable warehouse cargo that exploded in
| Beirut was always unsafe, even if it existed for nearly 7
| years.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > A coal plant puts more radioactive isotopes into the air
| then any nuclear plant.
|
| Until the nuclear plant suffers a catastrophic accident...
| namdnay wrote:
| The thing is, a coal plant is a guaranteed continuous
| catastrophic incident.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Don't discount nuclear waste as well. I'm not trying to
| promote coal here, but nuclear energy has problems too
| and shouldn't be touted as something it's not: a safe and
| clean solution.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Don't overblow nuclear waste. Normal responsible
| operation produces very little waste per electric MWh
| produced. And we know how to handle it. No energy
| production solution is perfect but compared to coal/gas
| pollution it can eliminate it is a nonbrainer.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| Here in Canada we use the CANDU system which is far safer
| than the systems like what you found in Three Mile Island
| - and no-one is as foolish as to do the Russian tests
| again.
| airtonix wrote:
| lol. Hi there fellow spreader of FUD, shall we join forces
| and earn our keep from the oil companies?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Just a friendly reminder that nuclear power causes fewer
| deaths per terawatt hour than any other energy source known
| to man.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Just a friendly reminder that nuclear power has an
| unbounded cost of dismantling, which will be borne by the
| local taxpayers.
|
| Which is one of the reasons we keep extending the operating
| certificates, to kick that can down the road.
| oddmiral wrote:
| We will know that after cooling of nuclear waste to
| background level only, which will not happen soon.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Nuclear waste is safely stored in pools and other
| facilities, it does not hurt anybody.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| if you bury it in the same place you dug the uranium ore
| from, doesn't that resolve it?
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| ...as long as you completely ignore any catastrophic risk
| for the next 10.000 years.
| scaladev wrote:
| Do you want a bit of perspective from someone who's been
| living under a very thick pall of coal-produced smog for
| many years? 100-500 ug/m3 of PM2.5 at day time (depends
| on wind speed mostly, right now it's 550 ug), twice or
| thrice that at night. I don't think my body can tolerate
| this much longer. If we were to switch the coal power
| plants to nuclear energy, I'd jump up and down like a
| little girl. A small risk of second Chernobyl seems just
| fine in comparison to this. I'd be fine with a risk of
| nuclear explosion with no chance to escape, honestly.
| rob74 wrote:
| Sorry for that, but may I ask where you live? Because if
| the pollution is coming from a coal power plant, there
| are filters for that. And I shudder to think what the
| people (mis)managing that coal power plant could do if it
| was nuclear instead...
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > Do you want a bit of perspective
|
| Thanks but I don't need a strawman.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Not to mention coal actually disperses a ton of
| radioactive waste, as it contains both uranium and
| thorium [1].
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-
| is-more-...
| oddmiral wrote:
| We cannot switch coal plants to nuclear. We can switch
| them to gas or hydro.
|
| > A small risk of second Chernobyl seems just fine in
| comparison to this. I'd be fine with a risk of nuclear
| explosion with no chance to escape, honestly.
|
| Chornobyl was near-miss. Potentially, it was able to turn
| whole Europe into radioactive wasteland, affecting lives
| of 1B of people. Can you just kill yourself only, please?
| mixermachine wrote:
| How about switching to renewables + batteries? Solar is
| now as cheap as coal power in China.
|
| When you add some batteries you will be fine with no
| pollution. And no waste your childerns childern (and
| beyond) have to take care of.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's not actually true that batteries and solar are a
| perfect clean solution - and neither is wind. Better than
| coal to be sure, but it's not what you're making it out
| to be.
|
| Rare earth metals have to be mined in remote portions of
| China in dystopian hellscapes. Lithium and other minerals
| also have to be mined, and leave toxic tailing ponds.
| Solar panels frequently have cadmium and tellurium, which
| are also hazardous, and need to be managed. Plastics and
| composites in wind turbines also cannot be recycled.
|
| There are no perfect solutions, and the future will
| almost certainly require a mixture of kinds of energy.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Nothing is risk free. The nice thing about nuclear power
| is that radiation is really easy to detect, with you
| know, a Geiger counter.
|
| On the other hand, particulate matter emitted by oil and
| coal plants causes millions of deaths per year, right
| now. And CO2 emissions from oil, gas and natural gas are
| bringing us to the brink of an environmental catastrophe.
| bob29 wrote:
| Detecting radiation isn't the hard (or expensive) part
| https://www.tri-
| cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article225...
|
| Its not nuclear vs oil and gas. Renewables are an
| alternative with lower cost and lower waste.
|
| A good safety history is a measure of what happened, not
| what could happen.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Nuclear energy has exceptionally good safety history.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > Nothing is risk free.
|
| I specifically called out SYSTEMIC risk.
|
| What's the systemic risk of solar panels and wind power,
| for example? A terrorist attack destroying 100 millions
| solar panels?
|
| > On the other hand
|
| The usual false dichotomy between nuclear and
| oil/coal/gas.
|
| > And CO2 emissions from oil, gas and natural gas are
| bringing us to the brink of an environmental catastrophe.
|
| ...not to mention the direct release of heat into the
| atmosphere due to poorly isolated house heating,
| industrial production and electric generation plants
| themselves. None of which is mitigated by nuclear.
| Rather, it's made even worse by any source of cheap
| electricity.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| Nuclear power plants are designed to withstand attacks
| from crazies. Terrorist attacks done so far have had
| minimal impact on infrastructure. It is a very minor and
| manageable threat.
|
| Release of heat due to chemical and nuclear sources does
| heat the planet, but the contribution to heating compared
| to effect of increasing CO2 concentration is negligible
| in the range of 1%, this is well known.
| airtonix wrote:
| OMG YOU HEATHEAN!
|
| How dare you!
|
| The church of climate catastrophe will seek an injuction
| on your slanderous lies!
|
| /s
| nojvek wrote:
| Someone who is a nuclear expert, could you answer some of my
| nuclear questions please.
|
| 1) the sun is a giant nuclear reactor and we indirectly derive
| most of our energy from it. Radioactive elements in general are
| the most energy dense and I agree with the idea of "nuclear
| energy in every home and office". Sounds amazing. What makes
| nuclear so dangerous?
|
| 2) are there nuclear materials with short half life. Such that if
| you turn it off, it's safe by default. It doesn't require
| constant cooking and isolation.
|
| 3) is if there is a super intelligent alien species out there,
| most likely they've figured out how to harness nuclear power and
| make it portable. Is there a way we, as human species can do the
| same?
|
| If voyager and the Mars rovers are operating on nuclear power,
| can we have nuclear powered planes, cars and robots that are safe
| and ubiquitous? (Safe nuclear batteries)
| garmaine wrote:
| Physics major with an interest in nuclear science. Does that
| count?
|
| > the sun is a giant nuclear reactor and we indirectly derive
| most of our energy from it. Radioactive elements in general are
| the most energy dense
|
| Worth noting that this is conflating two different phenomenon:
| fission, and fusion. Despite the similarity in spelling, these
| have very little to do with each other.
|
| Neither of these have much to do with the "nuclear generator"
| in the article, which is based on natural fission, but not a
| chain reaction. It's actually more akin to refined, bottled
| geothermal power.
|
| > What makes nuclear so dangerous?
|
| First of all, it's not. Nuclear is one of, if not THE safest
| and cleanest form of power. But there are risks worth worrying
| about, even though with modern designs and regulatory
| procedures the risk to life and the environment is less than
| with other sources.
|
| Those risks basically boil down the fact that radioactivity
| causes cancers, thyroid disease, and in high doses various
| lethal forms of radioactivity sickness. And like all heavy
| metals, radioactive materials can easily get absorbed by our
| biology and deliver that harmful radioactivity slowly over
| time.
|
| When there is a leak of radioactive material (like Chernobyl,
| Fukushima, or almost happened with Three Mile Island), the
| result can be pretty damn scary. But what nuclear nevertheless
| safer than other energy sources is (1) these events are rare,
| and nuclear is otherwise perfectly clean and safe; and (2)
| modern designs cannot fail in the way these older reactors did.
| For example, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island failed in pretty
| much the same way, but Three Mile Island's design kept the
| radiation entirely contained. When deciding about _new_ power
| plants, we should be evaluating the risks of _new_ designs.
|
| You might wonder what makes other power sources more dangerous.
| Coal and natural gas have obvious health and pollution
| concerns. But wind and solar both involve A LOT of materials
| processing, construction, and maintenance, all of which have
| dangers that add up. Geothermal and hydro power are probably
| the two power sources that are better than nuclear, but aren't
| available everywhere.
|
| TL;DR Nuclear is _scary_. It 's not necessarily dangerous
| (compared with other sources of power).
|
| > are there nuclear materials with short half life. Such that
| if you turn it off, it's safe by default. It doesn't require
| constant cooking and isolation.
|
| I think you are confusing controlled fission reactors vs.
| radioisotope generators.
|
| Fission reactors are the big nuclear power plants, which you
| can turn on and off. There are ways of making this safer and
| having less lethal byproducts. Mostly we need to start using
| breeder reactors, which reprocess spent fuel, instead of just
| putting it in waste pools and forgetting about it.
|
| Radioisotope generators are what TFA are about. Purified chunks
| of radioactive material (like plutonium) are naturally hot from
| their radioactivity, which is basically the same reason the
| Earth is hot--that's why I called it bottled geothermal power
| above. You then just attach some thermal couples to the outside
| of the plutonium, to generate electricity from the difference
| in temperature.
|
| You _cannot_ turn off a radioisotope generator. It just goes on
| being hot for decades, until the main radioactive elements have
| decayed away.
|
| > If voyager and the Mars rovers are operating on nuclear
| power, can we have nuclear powered planes, cars and robots that
| are safe and ubiquitous? (Safe nuclear batteries)
|
| Unlikely. We know how to make small nuclear power plants, as we
| use them in submarines. But it's not easy to do this in a
| _safe_ way, for reasons that are too complicated for a HN post.
| But basically it is the safety equipment that makes nuclear
| power big and bulky.
| nojvek wrote:
| Thanks a ton for the detailed responses. Do you have any
| links you recommend for me to learn more about the latest
| advancements of nuclear so I have my knowledge up to date ?
| garmaine wrote:
| "New nuclear reactor design" on google should provide you
| plenty of rabbit holes to go down.
| sigrlami wrote:
| With proper maintenance it is best possible source of energy in
| that regions. It's shame "green deal" gained too much hype,
| proper/safe nuclear energy most sustainable way with good ROI.
| pstuart wrote:
| Comments below show that while theoretically true, the real
| world maintenance failures do not help to promote more of this.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm pro-renewables and pro-nuclear if it can be
| done "right".
| ssully wrote:
| While I agree it's a shame nuclear energy has such a stigma, I
| think its stigma developed and solidified long before "green
| deal" was a thing.
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| I assume they're not worried about the fissile material being
| used in a dirty bomb?
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| The real damage of these dirty weapons is very limited, it's
| mostly physchological/fear. This stuff itself is not easy to
| spread with an explosion and it's not a deadly exposure either.
| You can't make a real nuclear reaction from this.
| drran wrote:
| There are ways to make dirty bombs orders of magnitude more
| dangerous. The problem is that radiation will spread and
| contaminate a large area for long time, so the bomb cannot be
| thrown over border then.
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| Interesting, thanks for your comment. I just did some further
| digging and it looks like the fuel is essentially a puck of
| metal alloy and radioactive material. Nuclear chemistry is so
| cool!
| leoh wrote:
| It's a legitimate concern. Although the fuels in RTGs (PU 238)
| will not engage in a chain reaction, like a traditional nuclear
| reactor, they could be used to fashion dirty bombs. No such
| uses are known, but the material has caused serious radiation
| burns.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
| Animats wrote:
| Martin made some of those in the 1960s.[1]
|
| [1] https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/5PQAAOSw53dc2vtp/s-l1600.jpg
| anonu wrote:
| Great video. I am glad that we are still making serious strides
| in nuclear energy research. Nuclear is the way to reduce carbon
| emissions in a substantially significant to turn back adverse
| climate change.
| forgotmysn wrote:
| i agree that nuclear can help reduce carbon emissions, but that
| doesn't mean that nuclear waste is less harmful to the planet
| than carbon emissions are. nuclear isn't any more sustainable
| than coal or fossil fuels.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Your life expectancy is reduced right now because the air you
| breath is polluted by all kind of carbon related emissions.
| Nuclear waste is easy to manage in comparison
|
| Carbon's best case scenarios is worst than nuclear's worst
| case scenario.
| anonu wrote:
| > All of the used fuel ever produced by the commercial
| nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a football
| field to a depth of less than 10 yards
|
| Source: https://www.nei.org/fundamentals/nuclear-waste
| biolurker1 wrote:
| There is the off chance we will discover a way to deactivate
| them before they pollute
| dmos62 wrote:
| And it's even more likely that we'll end up reusing them,
| increasing economic efficiency of nuclear fuel.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Exactly this - today's nuclear waste is tomorrow's
| nuclear fuel (+ some other useful and expensive materials
| mixed in).
|
| Actually in some countries nuclear waste is already (part
| of) today's fuel using existing reprocessing technology.
| OnACoffeeBreak wrote:
| Could you explain how properly sequestered nuclear waste is
| not less harmful to the planet as carbon in the atmosphere?
|
| I'm my current view, nuclear waste can be sequestered and
| stored effecting only a tiny fraction of the planet while
| greenhouse gases effect the whole planet.
| sliken wrote:
| Keep in mind that humans only move radiation around, not
| generate it.
|
| So sure if you mine uranium and concentrate it, you get a
| high peak source, but you are literally removing radiation
| from one place, and moving it to another.
|
| So if you concentrate uranium out of ocean water and them
| spread the radioactive waste back into the ocean (at the
| same concentration) you are actually benefiting the ocean.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| That's not quite right. Yes natural uranium and its
| daughters are a bit radioactive (this is partially why
| the center of the Earth is warm). But when you go ahead
| and fission nuclear fuel, it breaks into smaller atoms
| that are less stable. This means they give off their
| excess energy faster, or in other words are more
| radioactive. The higher rate of energy release can lead
| to higher amounts of biological damage.
|
| You can hold fresh nuclear fuel in your hand and be fine.
| Once it goes in the reactor to be fissioned, you'd get a
| fatal radiation dose in seconds if you stood next to it
| unshielded.
| forgotmysn wrote:
| i just feel like sticking nuclear waste in the ground and
| pretending that it's not a problem or won't impact the
| health of the planet is not a solution
| sliken wrote:
| Keep in mind that nuclear fuel came out of the
| environment to begin with. Take a radiation detector to a
| large/old building sometime that has large granite
| blocks.
|
| For similar reasons note that coal burning power plants
| add WAY more radiation into the environment than nuclear
| plants.
|
| So humans don't create radiation, they just mine it,
| concentrate it, extract energy from it, and then dispose
| of it. So we are just moving it around, not creating
| additional radiation.
|
| Imagine we extract uranium from ocean water, the
| radiation levels in the ocean would go from low, to even
| lower. If we take the nuclear waste and distribute it
| across the ocean the radiation levels would (at worst)
| raise to the levels we started with.
|
| Based on what I've read all the scientists that are
| experts in relevant fields say that dealing with nuclear
| waste is a political problem, not a scientific one. There
| are multiple reasonable solutions. My favorite it making
| giant spikes out of a mix of radioactive material and
| glass. Covering the spike with steel and dropping it
| where the ocean is deep, near a subduction zone, and the
| sedimentation rate is higher than the leakage rate. By
| the time the spike hits the ocean floor it's going fast
| enough to bury itself deeply, the sediment fills in
| behind and will keep getting deeper, and the spikes will
| get sucked beneath the continental plate and not bother
| anyone ever again.
| time0ut wrote:
| I apologize in advance if I am not understanding you, but
| the process of fission generates new radioactive daughter
| nuclides and neutron activated material. The
| radioactivity in a nuclear reactor isn't simply a
| concentrated aggregate of the original fuel. It is a
| heterogeneous mixture of transmuted elements that is
| quite different from the original in its radioactivity.
| simonh wrote:
| Not really, because the nuclear fuel would naturally
| degrade into much the same materials anyway, just over a
| longer time frame. Nuclear reactors just speed up the
| process.
|
| Yes that means higher concentrations of those decay
| products to deal with in the short term, but these mostly
| have quite short half lives in the grand scheme of
| things, in the order of years or decades.
|
| The environmental impacts of nuclear energy are often
| grossly overestimated, this is why so many
| environmentalists are advocating for nuclear energy.
| godelski wrote:
| Can you explain why sticking it in the ground is not an
| acceptable solution? To be clear, sticking it in the
| ground that is neither seismically active nor near water
| sources. The areas people want to stick them in the
| ground are thousands of miles from civilizations and meet
| the other criteria. It isn't like the rest of the waste
| that we just stick in the ground (like coal, plastics,
| etc that DO enter our water supply).
| purerandomness wrote:
| Very good question! We could totally stick it in the
| ground, given: "(1) stable geological formations, and (2)
| stable human institutions over hundreds of thousands of
| years." Easy, right?
|
| Problem: "no known human civilization has ever endured
| for so long, and no geologic formation of adequate size
| for a permanent radioactive waste repository has yet been
| discovered that has been stable for so long a period" [0]
|
| The problem isn't the "sticking into the ground" part.
|
| It's the finding of that place that will stay
| geologically inactive, uncivilized, and not near water
| sources for the _next 100000 years_. And then taking that
| bet.
|
| It's literally like saying "Fuck other people who are
| born after me".
|
| Plastic stuck into the ground is not radioactive. Plastic
| stuck into the ground also degrades in a fraction of a
| fraction of the half-life of Plutonium.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| level_radioactive_waste_m...
| glogla wrote:
| > It's literally like saying "Fuck other people who are
| born after me".
|
| Possibly, but unless there is other realistic low-carbon
| energy source (and it seems there isn't - hydro is
| already built everywhere where it can be, and solar and
| wind are intermittent with large-scale storage being
| unsolved problem) there won't be any people born after
| you.
| godelski wrote:
| This is exactly my problem with this very common retort.
| It is exactly "perfection is the enemy of the good."
| There's 3 solutions to climate that we have right now
| (and we should be betting on all 3. 1) Fission 2) a
| miracle in fusion research, 3) a miracle in battery
| storage. We needed to act 20 years ago (really 50). While
| we don't act we are still polluting with coal and oil.
| But I think people are ignoring point #3 and I don't
| think this is necessarily the fault of the average person
| because there's an inaccurate representation in the media
| about the progress and how far we still have to go.
| Fission is the compromise we make for not having acted 50
| years ago. It is a much smaller problem for future
| generations to deal with than that of climate change. So
| at this point it is your choice: nuclear waste for the
| future or climate catastrophe. (Not to mention all the
| other waste and stuff but that's another discussion)
| SiNTEx wrote:
| Can't we keep it underground just till we have space
| rockets so reliable and cheap so we can dispose all the
| nuclear waste to space? Definitely not something we are
| even remotely able to do now but when talking about
| hundreds and thousands of years it seems possible.
| oddmiral wrote:
| If, say, 0.01% of millions of rockets, needed to deploy
| radioactive waste, will blow up in the process, then we
| will have much bigger problem.
| nitrogen wrote:
| "Space" isn't a place, it's a velocity. Even if you throw
| something really fast in space, it will eventually come
| back to you unless it hits something else.
| godelski wrote:
| This is not correct. Space is a place. And when people
| say send it into space they typically mean the sun.
| Although any uninhabitable body would do fine as well.
| There are plenty of those.
| nitrogen wrote:
| The amount of energy required to send something into the
| sun is quite high. It's not like driving 93 million
| miles, you have to change the orbit of the waste away
| from Earth's orbit.
| godelski wrote:
| I didn't say it was a good idea, but that's what people
| mean. Although it isn't unreasonable to imagine space
| elevators and slingshots a few thousand years from now.
| hulahoof wrote:
| There is surely some location in the Australian outback
| that would meet this criteria, as we have quite little
| seismic activity
| godelski wrote:
| > no known human civilization has ever endured for so
| long
|
| I have 2 points here. 1) The half life is longer than
| recorded history so this isn't really fair. We've seen
| humans continually advance. Sure, there has been setbacks
| and some regressions but we haven't ever come even close
| at reverting back to the stone or even bronze age. That
| is highly unlikely and if that were to happen we'd
| probably have bigger problems. 2) Not all waste is equal.
| A good rule of thumb is that high energy waste is short
| lived and long lived waste is low energy. Why? Because
| high energy waste is shedding particles much faster than
| low energy. Simply if you use a bucket to remove the
| water from your swimming pool you'll finish a lot faster
| than you would if you used a tea cup.
|
| > no geologic formation of adequate size for a permanent
| radioactive waste repository has yet been discovered that
| has been stable for so long a period
|
| This is false and I'm not sure where you got this
| information from. We chose the location for the Seed
| Vault (and the GitHub vault) for similar reasons. There's
| plenty of other locations as well, several within the US.
| As for the bet, I'm betting on generations of PhD holding
| geologists to make that decision over really anyone else.
| As long as what they say doesn't set off any bullshit
| alarms I don't see why they shouldn't be believed. They
| are in fact the experts in the subject matter and just
| rejecting their work with no real evidence is rather
| arrogant and surprising to see on HN. I believe them for
| the same reason I believe climate scientists. I've read
| their work, seems reasonable, I've talked to them and
| they seem reasonable and passionate and well studied. How
| arrogant would I need to be to tell them they are wrong.
| My expertise lies in other fields.
|
| I'd also suggest reading what actual plans are and
| understanding the scale of the waste problem. I find that
| many people over estimate the scale by many orders of
| magnitude. [0]
|
| > It's literally like saying "Fuck other people who are
| born after me".
|
| I'd say that not taking care of climate is saying "Fuck
| other people who are born after me." You're letting
| perfection get in the way of progress. We can say similar
| things about strip mining and rare earth materials. The
| things we'd need to develop battery storage to make
| renewables a feasible path forward. We can't wait for a
| miracle in battery storage. We needed to act 20 years
| ago. So now we have to make compromises. And as we drag
| our feet we are still polluting with coal and oil. To me
| that is the real "fuck you" to future generations. That
| we got so caught up in perfection that we let high
| pollution levels continue right on while we prayed for a
| miracle.
|
| [0] https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
| simonh wrote:
| This stuff came out of the ground in the first place.
| What are we supposed to do about all the millions of tons
| of nuclear fuel just lying around in rocks and seawater
| right now?
|
| What we need to do is evaluate the risks from all the
| current options. Fossil fuels, renewables and nuclear
| energy and come up with a balanced strategy. There are
| people dying right now from radioneucleotides released
| from fossil fuels, or just ambient radioactivity. It's a
| matter of relative risk.
| godelski wrote:
| That's not a fair comparison because nuclear material for
| weapons and reactors is enriched. There's not much
| naturally occurring U235. Not that you can't safely put
| it in the ground, but your comparison isn't exactly fair.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Could you explain how properly sequestered nuclear waste
| is not less harmful to the planet as carbon in the
| atmosphere?
|
| That question can be answered be asking yourself how
| society would look if the government was efficient,
| logical, morale and free of corruption. In other words, its
| an interesting philosophical question, but not one that has
| any relevance to reality. Unfortunately most people, no how
| nominally "intelligent" they are, insist that the world
| exists as they wish it would, rather than it actually does.
| In reality, mistakes happen, incompetence happens,
| corruption happens, and unforeseen circumstances happen -
| all of which render nuclear waste (and facilities that
| produce nuclear power) much riskier and more dangerous than
| they would be in an ideal world. Unfortunately, this bit of
| undeniable objective reality is extremely unpopular (and
| offensive) to technocrats and others who worship blindly at
| the altar of human society and technology.
| fractallyte wrote:
| You are unfairly downvoted. Corruption is a _real_
| problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naples_waste_manag
| ement_crisis
| purerandomness wrote:
| "properly sequestered" is the key word. There is no such
| thing.
|
| Here in Germany, we still have not found where to put
| nuclear waste long-term, and there is no solution in sight.
|
| Even if one day we find one, how do we communicate the
| potential dangers of nuclear waste to a civilization that
| is supposed to understand what we're communicating in
| 30000, 50000 years? With a fancy unicode symbol, like
| U+2622?
|
| We have no idea what people 3000 years ago were trying to
| tell us with their fancy symbols.
|
| Nuclear energy is the analogy of tech debt that can never
| be paid back, ever.
| posix_me_less wrote:
| That does not mean the solution does not exist or that it
| is hard. Germany government chose to reject nuclear, I am
| not expecting that it would then work towards making
| nuclear more popular.
| [deleted]
| p_l wrote:
| With advanced reprocessing as well as waste-burning
| containers, the question is about communicating it for
| ~200 years, not 50000 years. And it would also increase
| our efficiency in using the fuel to boot.
| glogla wrote:
| > Nuclear energy is the analogy of tech debt that can
| never be paid back, ever.
|
| The reason why the "waste" is dangerous is that there's a
| lot of energy in it - energy that can still be extracted
| at a later date. It might very easily be very valuable in
| the future.
|
| Germany is really sad case, where they stopped using
| nuclear and replaced it with "clean coal". Terrible thing
| for the planet.
|
| The Greens talk about nuclear waste and Fukushima, and
| meanwhile German green-washed coal plants and cheating
| diesel engines put crazy things in the air.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Vitrify it, clad it with concrete, clad that with steel
| and dump it in a subduction trench where it'll eventually
| join the magma under the mantle.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Let's see. Deepest hole drilling: 12km - Thickness of
| continental lithosphere: at least 100km. How will you get
| your nuclear waste there?
| boogies wrote:
| It's arguably misleading to even call it "waste" -- it's
| recyclable. Even if you don't recycle it, the little ceramic
| pellets weigh two hundred fifty-three thousand, one hundred
| and sixty-four (.55696202531645569620 +-) times less per
| person than gas and coal (and the difference in volume is
| presumably many times larger):
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html#howmuch
|
| > If all the electricity use of the USA was distributed
| evenly among its population, and all of it came from nuclear
| power, then the amount of nuclear waste each person would
| generate per year would be 39.5 grams. That's the weight of
| seven U. S. quarters of waste, per year! A detailed
| description of this result can be found here
| [https://whatisnuclear.com/assets/waste_per_person.pdf]. If
| we got all our electricity from coal and natural gas, expect
| to have over 10,000 kilograms of CO2/yr attributed to each
| person, not to mention other poisonous emissions directly to
| the biosphere (based on EIA emissions data [https://www.eia.g
| ov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_car...]).
|
| > If you want raw numbers: in 2018, there were just over
| 80,000 metric tonnes of high-level waste in the USA. Between
| 1971 and 2018, nuclear reactors in the USA generated 3000 GW-
| years of electricity to make this waste.
|
| > For comparison, in 2007 alone the US burned 948,000,000
| metric tonnes of coal. This means that coal plants made 32
| times more waste every single day than the US nuclear fleet
| has made in the past 45 years! Granted, coal made a higher
| fraction of the country's electricity, but the numbers are
| still crazy impressive for nuclear.
|
| > The astoundingly low amount of nuclear waste is thanks to
| the near magical energy density of the atom.
|
| More: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
|
| Edit: replaced "containable" in second sentence with numbers
| bob29 wrote:
| How much does it cost to handle and transport these tiny
| pellets? How much energy goes into the materials needed to
| manufacture the containments? How much energy goes into
| mining and refining the ore and bringing it to the reactor?
| akho wrote:
| Mining and transporting coal is not free, and more
| expensive per MWh than nuclear fuel. Simply because of
| the volumes involved.
|
| How much will it cost to re-capture an contain the CO2
| generated by coal and gas?
| donarb wrote:
| Coal plants also create nuclear waste. Trace amounts of
| uranium and thorium in coal become concentrated after the
| coal is burned away, leaving high concentrations of nuclear
| waste.
| oddmiral wrote:
| So, you say, coal waste can be source of uranium for
| nuclear plants, right? How many tonnes of Uranium we can
| extract from coal ashes?
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Unfortunately, a lot of it just gets released into the
| atmosphere. Capturing it all would be the obvious next
| step, but it costs money.
| drran wrote:
| Just about 1% of fly ash is released into the atmosphere.
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| I too am happy about advances in nuclear energy research, and
| would like to make a remark regarding its suitability for
| fighting the climate crisis.
|
| In 2019, just 4 % of the global primary energy came from
| nuclear power (the figure is about 10 % if we restrict to
| electricity). Hence replacing fossil sources by nuclear would
| entail large-scale construction of new nuclear reactors. By the
| time we're done building these, we will already have exceeded
| our CO2 budget for keeping below 1.5 degC at a reasonable
| certainty.
|
| Also, at the current rate, the Uranium reserves last for
| approximately 140 years; if all fossil sources were switched
| for nuclear, it would last for 10 years. This problem can in
| principle be alleviated by innovative reactor types, but
| realistically they won't be available for large-scale
| production in the next couple years.
|
| Luckily, we do have all the technology for phasing out fossil
| energy while staying within our CO2 budget: water, wind, solar,
| storage of synthetic gas, gas-fueled power plants (fueled by
| synthetic gas obtained using renewable energy). Energy
| production with these alternatives is cheaper than with
| nuclear; this fact is an additional issue for expanding nuclear
| power -- it's not economically viable.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| > Also, at the current rate, the Uranium reserves last for
| approximately 140 years; if all fossil sources were switched
| for nuclear, it would last for 10 years. This problem can in
| principle be alleviated by innovative reactor types, but
| realistically they won't be available for large-scale
| production in the next couple years.
|
| You either have to use seawater uranium or use breeder
| reactors of any fuel cycle. If you use both, uranium will
| last on the order of how long the nuclear fusion fuel of the
| sun will last (i.e. billions of years).
|
| Most importantly, you don't need to only build breeder
| reactors right now. The "won't be ready in 10 years,
| forgetaboutit" argument doesn't really stand, especially as
| we look to powering direct carbon capture tech alongside
| decarbonizing a growing world.
|
| National nuclear energy programs have always and will always
| consider a transition to breeder reactors essential for any
| meaningful long-term energy source. This has been the known
| plan since the mid-1940s.
|
| Fun fact (pointed out to me by user pfdietz): If you dig up
| any average rock on earth, it has more energy in nuclear fuel
| (uranium and thorium) than a piece of pure coal of the same
| mass. WOW!
|
| I wrote up a little page on this recently (featuring GNU
| Units if you saw that article yesterday):
| https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-
| is-...
| blargmaster42_8 wrote:
| Fake news, using breeder reactors we have fertile
| fissionable material for thusands of years.
| glogla wrote:
| > Also, at the current rate, the Uranium reserves last for
| approximately 140 years; if all fossil sources were switched
| for nuclear, it would last for 10 years.
|
| This is a so well known misconception that it is hard to not
| consider it propaganda by this point.
|
| _Known reservers_ of Uranium are of that size, yes. That 's
| because with nobody bothers to look for more, because not
| only is there enough known for now, but finding more would
| actually increase competition and lower the prices - losing
| those who own the reserves the money.
|
| There is way more Uranium just in the ocean water.
|
| Meanwhile, all the technologies you're listing are either
| already maxed out (hydro), intermittent with unsolved storage
| (solar and wind), or vapourware (power to gas, etc).
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| > This is a so well known misconception that it is hard to
| not consider it propaganda by this point.
|
| Wikipedia paints a different picture but I consider that a
| fair point and I will look into it, thank you.
|
| > intermittent with unsolved storage (solar and wind)
|
| Can you be more specific about that? I know the figures
| only for Germany. Here, solar and wind match up almost
| perfectly (solar excees in the summer, wind excess in the
| winter) -- we would only need to store energy reserves for
| about two weeks. Gas tanks capable of storing these amounts
| already exist, they have been built several decades ago.
|
| > or vapourware (power to gas, etc)
|
| This is the first time that I hear power to gas described
| as vapourware. I'm very interested in that topic, could you
| give some more details or pointers?
| dmurray wrote:
| > This is the first time that I hear power to gas
| described as vapourware. I'm very interested in that
| topic, could you give some more details or pointers?
|
| Surely the onus is on whoever is claiming the technology
| _does_ exist to provide some details of it.
|
| I checked Wikipedia though [0] and the world's total
| installed P2G capacity looks like...less than 100 MW?
| It's at best one step above vapourware.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
| p_l wrote:
| The 140 years number is also for the very inefficient
| reactors that are mostly used now, where majority of the
| "spent" fuel could be reused in different design - but
| reprocessing is dead for political reasons.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Also don't forget breeder reactors - those should make any
| existing fuel supply lust much longer if you can get them
| working at scale.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _By the time we 're done building these, we will already
| have exceeded our CO2 budget for keeping below 1.5 degC at a
| reasonable certainty._
|
| Trying to understand how this is an argument.
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| If we decided today to do large-scale deployment of new
| nuclear reactors, then we would see reductions in CO2
| emissions from the energy sector only in ten to twenty
| years.
|
| But at our current rate, the global CO2 budget will be
| fully exhausted in about eight years.
|
| Hence we need to seize other measures, measures which
| reduce our emissions on a shorter timescale: switching to
| wind+solar+storage and in the process democratizing energy
| production, rethinking mobility (massive expansion of
| public transport, massive price reduction of public
| transport, massive investion in biking infrastructure,
| making outer city districts more attractive), putting a
| prize on CO2 with a substantial steering effect (but
| ensuring that the proceeds of such a tax are given, in
| equal parts, to the population, so that people who
| contribute less-than-average to the climate crisis have
| more money available at the end of the day), transforming
| the system (because even with a prize for CO2, there are
| lots of valuable things which cannot be measured in
| dollars, and competition pressure in unchecked capitalism
| deepens inequality and exploitation), ...
| thu2111 wrote:
| _But at our current rate, the global CO2 budget will be
| fully exhausted in about eight years._
|
| We don't actually know that. It's a model projection.
| Academic models have a long history of being wrong and
| seemingly always in the direction of being too
| pessimistic, across a variety of fields.
|
| Do we need to transition away from fossil fuels? Sure.
| Are the models so robust and so beyond question that
| nuclear should be ruled out on the basis of a handful of
| years of construction time? No way. The science is
| nowhere near solid enough for that.
| drran wrote:
| I have problems with CO2 already. I need to ventilate my
| room every 0.5 hours to keep CO2 level below 1000ppm.
| jabl wrote:
| > If we decided today to do large-scale deployment of new
| nuclear reactors, then we would see reductions in CO2
| emissions from the energy sector only in ten to twenty
| years.
|
| Nobody serious is suggesting we do nothing but deploy
| nuclear reactors. Just in the energy sector, we should do
| a massive build-out of wind, solar, transmission, and,
| yes, nuclear.
|
| > switching to wind+solar+storage and in the process
| democratizing energy production
|
| These have large economies of scale too. While you might
| want to install a small propeller in your back yard, it's
| much more cost effective to get the energy from the grid
| supplied by a large scale wind farm.
|
| > rethinking mobility (massive expansion of public
| transport, massive price reduction of public transport,
| massive investion in biking infrastructure, making outer
| city districts more attractive), putting a prize on CO2
| with a substantial steering effect (but ensuring that the
| proceeds of such a tax are given, in equal parts, to the
| population, so that people who contribute less-than-
| average to the climate crisis have more money available
| at the end of the day), transforming the system (because
| even with a prize for CO2, there are lots of valuable
| things which cannot be measured in dollars, and
| competition pressure in unchecked capitalism deepens
| inequality and exploitation), ...
|
| These may all be good ideas (and personally, I would
| certainly agree with some of those), but has nothing to
| do with whether the needed energy is produced by
| renewables, nuclear, or mass deployment of hamster
| wheels.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The thrust of it is nuclear power takes long enough to
| build that if we try to meet the 1.5C goal using
| principally nuclear power by the time the plants come
| online we will have put enough carbon into the air from the
| existing power sources that we'll blow past 1.5C and get
| into the 'absolutely catastrophic sea level rise' territory
| instead of just causing whole island nations to disappear
| and the largest displacement in human history we're
| currently aiming for.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, from OPs response, that is what they think.
|
| I think it amounts to "this only solves half the problem,
| so we shouldn't do it".
|
| Most big problems aren't solved by just doing one thing.
| When global warming is finally solved, it will have been
| by 10 separate things that each solved 5-20% of the
| problem.
|
| Also, imposing an arbitrary deadline in 2029 is horrible
| project management. In a commercial project it's also
| dumb, but at least there you can cancel the project, and
| people move on to do other things.
|
| For Earth, we can't cancel the planet in 2029 if targets
| weren't met.
| desmond373 wrote:
| Building nuclear reactors usually involves laying concrete,
| transportation, steel and other sources of carbon
| emissions.
|
| I'm unsure of the CO2 quantities so I cant make a statement
| as to whether its worth the CO2 cost.
|
| What I can say is that wind, solar and other renewable
| alternatives also have initial CO2 costs, possibly lower
| than that of nuclear reactors.
| passerby1 wrote:
| Would be interesting to estimate and compare nuclear vs
| alternative "initial co2 efficiency per 1 megawatt
| priduced", considering large lifespan and power of
| reactor.
| jabl wrote:
| Plenty of such studies have been done. An AFAIK
| relatively recent and neutral one
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-
| low...
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't think they were saying that just the resources to
| build the reactors would exceed that CO2 budget, but
| rather that the world would exceed that CO2 budget in the
| time it takes to build the reactors.
| [deleted]
| aftbit wrote:
| Could you provide some sources? Embodied CO2 & energy is
| certainly a huge problem, but it seems likely to affect solar
| & wind as well. Could we really build enough solar and wind
| at today's level of technology (assuming sufficient economic
| motivation) without also blowing through our CO2 budget?
|
| At this point, it seems likely to me that we are doomed to at
| least a 1.5degC global temperature rise.
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| > Could you provide some sources?
|
| The figure about the proportion of nuclear power is from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption, the
| figure "140 years" from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_uranium.
|
| > Could we really build enough solar and wind at today's
| level of technology (assuming sufficient economic
| motivation) without also blowing through our CO2 budget?
|
| A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the
| necessary construction efforts require the emission of a
| couple of Gt CO2e. For comparison, at the start of 2018 our
| CO2 budget was 420 Gt (now it's about 320 Gt).
| pelasaco wrote:
| Beautiful short documentary. In my paranoid mind i was expecting
| the lighthouse actually being an Intercontinental ballistic
| missile with atomic warhead. Stupid me!
| ricardobayes wrote:
| The Soviets sure liked nuclear energy. The only remaining nuclear
| icebreaker/merchant ship (the Sevmorput) is still in operation.
| However it's a bit tricky to actually ship anything with it as
| most countries don't allow it to enter their ports, let alone
| their water. They mostly use it to ship stuff to Antarctica.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Russia still operates multiple nuclear icebreakers. Some of
| them are brand new.
|
| As far as I know two Arktika-class ships are still in
| operation. Both Taymyr-class icebreakers still operate
|
| Then there are five new project 22220 vessels under
| construction or under order. Each of them has two reactors that
| produce. 175 MW total.
|
| Russia is planning to start building Project 10510 nuclear-
| powered icebreakers within 10 years.
| gambiting wrote:
| Not to mention the floating nuclear power plant "Akademik
| Lomonosov" just got commissioned as well.
| Alupis wrote:
| > However it's a bit tricky to actually ship anything with it
| as most countries don't allow it to enter their ports, let
| alone their water
|
| I'm curious, why is that? The US, and other nations, routinely
| sail nuclear powered ships into ports all around the world.
| Fezzik wrote:
| My hunch is that most Western countries would be hesitant to
| allow anything that is nuclear + Russian on their shores.
| This article does not answer your question, but it sounds
| like as of 12/2020 the boat may be headed to the scrapyard
| due to needing costly repairs.
|
| https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htseamo/articles/20201225..
| ..
| Alupis wrote:
| Your hunch is in line with my hunch, mostly.
|
| I doubt it has to do with it being of Russian origin - but
| more-or-less the unknown level of maintenance the ship and
| it's reactor have had since the fall of the USSR.
|
| The reactors on these ships cannot be readily weaponized;
| there's practically no risk there. However, the reactors
| require a full crew to operate, even when just sitting in
| port being babysat (there is no "turning off" a rector).
|
| During the collapse of the USSR, regular maintenance and
| full crew staffing would have likely been challenging,
| putting the condition of the reactor in uncertain
| territory.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Yes I thought many aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| All US ones are yes. Most of their subs too I believe.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| All current US subs.
|
| The last diesel class was the 3x 1950s Barbels,
| decommissioned by 1990:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbel-class_submarine
| tjoff wrote:
| They do?
|
| Doesn't seem to exist many civil nuclear powered ships at
| all. And barely any non-US/Russian ships, at least still in
| service. From my quick searches at least.
|
| Large nuclear military ships likely have some port
| restrictions anyway.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Large nuclear military ships likely have some port
| restrictions anyway.
|
| The restrictions are more to do with the size of the ship,
| not it's propulsion mechanism.
|
| Routinely, US Submarines and Aircraft Carriers (all powered
| by nuclear reactors) sail into normal civilian ports around
| the world for various reasons.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| New Zealand is one country that refuses to allow nuclear-
| powered anything near.
| Alupis wrote:
| Seems this is no longer true[1].
|
| [1] https://news.usni.org/2016/09/27/n-z-chief-navy-u-s-
| nuclear-...
| manfredo wrote:
| Nuclear powered warships. As far as I know there was only one
| nuclear freighter, and it was more of a PR stunt.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah
| p_l wrote:
| Part of the problem was that NS Savannah was obsolete about
| the time it was introduced, combined with essentially
| requiring military crew to operate due to US law.
|
| So you introduce a very expensive to run freighter that
| requires complex cargo handling _just_ as containers are
| starting to take the world. Not a good idea.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| And they sent a whole load of liquid metal reactors into orbit
| too. One crashed on Canada and the others are in disposal
| orbits and will come down in a very long time... All for a few
| months worth of radar.
| namibj wrote:
| Maybe SpaceX sends a Starship to catch them and brings them
| to the moon or somewhere else where they won't be a problem.
| lstodd wrote:
| Of depicting the RTGs I think the best is
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Ended_This_Summer
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6rk1BK5eOU
| bigiain wrote:
| Came to post this. A great film.
| bullen wrote:
| In Sweden between 1930-1970 we produced building elements from
| concrete where oilshale was used to burn the chalk and the ashes
| of the fuel was mixed into the concrete!
|
| That shale ash was so rich in uranium that the concrete turned
| blue! Since then thousands have died by passively breathing the
| radon evaporation from the walls in some Swedish houses.
|
| On the subject RTG elements are also used in space probes:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62hZJVqs2o
| dheera wrote:
| By "nuclear", my understanding is that these used thermoelectric
| radioactive batteries, not nuclear fission reactors. Big
| difference. Much lower maintainence.
|
| (Basically you get a hunk of radioactive material that heats up
| from its own radiation and harvest that heat for electricity.)
| tiku wrote:
| So why can't we have this tech with radioactive waste in our
| home or cars? With a proper lead shield would it be dangerous
| or not?
| soared wrote:
| I was going to reply saying I don't want tiny pieces of
| radioactive material all over my house/globe, but then
| realized I have a tiny explosive (battery) in my hand and
| littered all of my house.
| dheera wrote:
| People freak out when they hear "nuclear" and "radiactive",
| but there are 3 types of radioactivity.
|
| Alpha and low energy beta emitters such as those used in
| nuclear batteries are not dangerous at all if shielded
| properly. In fact they are MUCH easier to shield than
| shielding a Lithium battery from the possibility of fire.
|
| It's gamma emitters that are much harder to shield
| properly.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's more complex than that in case of a failure, because
| ingesting an alpha or beta emitter - directly, or through
| the food chain - is going to be dangerous to health.
| Can't exactly line your intestines with lead.
|
| And while giving RTGs to general population isn't the
| brightest idea, it's stupid to consider these issues as a
| wholesale dealbreaker for nuclear technologies.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Alpha and low energy beta emitters such as those used
| in nuclear batteries are not dangerous at all if shielded
| properly.
|
| Read: if there is no feasible route for them to be
| aspirated, ingested, or get into your eyes.
|
| Making a new device that has this property seems to be a
| pretty straightforward problem that we know how to do.
| The problem comes when an old device has been damaged or
| destroyed kinetically or via pyrotechnics.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah but when your phone battery blows you just have fire.
| You don't have to abandon your house because it's
| contaminated :)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It does not generate a lot of power.
| dheera wrote:
| Good question. Pity people on HN are downvoting such well-
| intentioned curiosity. I think people are working on that ...
|
| https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/09/02/us-startup-
| unveils...
|
| I'm not an expert on that tech though.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Having lots of them around, means still lots of radioactive
| accidents, because of normal accidents.
|
| And to actually power your car, I believe they have too
| little power output, so they would only make for a expensive
| and dangerous car batterie, but one you do not have to
| charge.
|
| (also, terrorists, dirty bombs, ...)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes and their output is static. What do you do with all
| that heat when you're not driving?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Right now, I would say, I would not have to worry about
| getting into a cold and icy car. But in the summer ...
| dheera wrote:
| Use the nuclear battery to charge a secondary lithium
| battery, and that is the battery that the car actually
| uses to drive.
|
| Considering cars are typically used for <10% of the day,
| the battery's static output wattage only needs to be
| about 1/10 of a car's operational wattage.
|
| Basically when you get home and park your car, it just
| starts charging on its own from its nuclear battery.
| Optimize the nuclear battery size to minimize excess. If
| that battery gets full, release the excess as heat to the
| ground or sky, and also use some of it to maintain the
| lithium battery at optimal temperature. It will be only
| 1/10 of the driving wattage, so it will be much easier to
| do something with it.
|
| Or plug in the car when you get home and it can power a
| good fraction of your home.
| tiku wrote:
| Mine bitcoins, help solve complex puzzles etc, charge
| batteries or the grid..
| missosoup wrote:
| RTGs don't provide enough energy to power a car. You're
| looking at 1kW electrical maximum. The one on mars lander
| Cruiosity provides about 100W electrical power nominal.
|
| But the main reason is that people are stupid and some would
| inevitably pull theirs apart and contaminate their
| surroundings with pretty nasty radioactive material. There's
| no engineering or practical reason why we wouldn't have RTGs
| for a heap of civilian applications, the reason is that
| people suck.
|
| NASA is currently working on a 'micro' scale fully self
| contained fission reactor for the next mission to meet the
| higher power demand of the craft.
| ju-st wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| dheera wrote:
| That's only about a factor of 10 from being useful. If you
| have a 10kW battery, or 10 1kW batteries, you can use that
| to charge a Lithium battery for a day which will get you
| 100 kW for 2.4 hours per day, which sounds pretty damn
| useful for typical urban commuter use.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think it'd be much cheaper to use PV for this use case.
| staplung wrote:
| The danger depends somewhat on the type of radioactive
| material used and how much of its radiation is alpha, beta or
| gamma, it's toxicity (independent of its radioactivity,
| plutonium is one of the most toxic substances in existence),
| half-life etc. But really, the main problem with
| proliferation of RTGs is dirty bombs. If you used them in
| cars or homes you can imagine the kinds of issues you might
| have with a serious collision or wildfires.
|
| In any case, people actually once proposed cars like that!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's still fission. Just natural decay without management to
| speed it up or slow it down. In reactors the fuel rods
| naturally decay slowly and can be sped up with neutrons. So
| they can be turned 'off' and adapt to changing electricity
| needs. But RTGS are very static. Principle is still the same
| though. Both decay, cause heat which is made into electricity.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Technically speaking, fission is defined as splitting a
| nucleus into large chunks, approximately half the size of the
| original atom.
|
| These things use radioactive decay, which is either alpha or
| beta particles coming out at a constant rate. Alpha and beta
| decay are not considered fission. (Though you'd have a
| reasonable case with Beryllium-8 alpha decay to Helium-4!)
|
| Spontaneous fission decay is a thing and does happen. But not
| enough to power any of these kinds of things.
| dhuk_2018 wrote:
| RTGs are also used on a lot of US and Russian deep space
| missions...
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| The Saturn mission Cassini had 72 pounds of plutonium on it.
| The Pluto mission New Horizons has 24 pounds of plutonium to
| power itself.
| hairytrog wrote:
| The most convenient decay source is Plutonium-238 because it
| does not produce any gammas during the decay which would
| require lots and lots of shielding to protect people. It has
| long half life of 87 years so a reduction in power of roughly
| 1% per year. However, it's weapons material - not okay for
| wide use. This cannot be overstated. Making nuclear weapons
| today is very easy when you have the requisite materials (Ted
| Taylor of Los Alamos used to say it would take 3 guys a few
| months starting from scratch). With today's off the shelf
| timing systems, explosives, and manufacturing, it could be
| even faster.
|
| Next up is Strontium, but that is quite dangerous due to
| human uptake in the bones. And there's polonium - very
| poisonous and too short a half life to be used.
|
| I have heard from a friend in the business of a new concept
| that generates desirable isotopes specifically for decay heat
| sources in a reactor in an encapsulated form which gets rid
| of any weapons material or processing of radioactive
| material.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge.
| ..
| Jun8 wrote:
| Fascinating! Wikipedia entry of the technology used:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
|
| The location is beautiful
| (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aniva,+Russia,+694005/@46....)
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| There is a strange looking structure in the water just north-
| east of the light.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@46.0472783,143.4338028,652m/dat...
|
| Fish trap?
| _visgean wrote:
| maybe squid hunting? judging by the lights...
| dmos62 wrote:
| Started browsing photo spheres. Here's an awe inspiring one
| relatively close by:
| https://www.google.com/maps/@54.30123,138.6972783,3a,90y,345...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Most have no protection, not even fences or warning signs,
| and the locations of some of these facilities are no longer
| known due to poor record keeping. In one instance, the
| radioactive compartments were opened by a thief. There are
| approximately 1,000 such RTGs in Russia, all of which have long
| since exceeded their designed operational lives of ten years.
| Most of these RTGs likely no longer function, and may need to
| be dismantled. Some of their metal casings have been stripped
| by metal hunters, despite the risk of radioactive
| contamination.
|
| Yikes.
| etimberg wrote:
| Lots of these have been abandoned in the wild. One caused an
| incident in Lia, Georgia in 2001. https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...
| gambiting wrote:
| I was going to post this exact link but you beat me to it
| by 14 minutes :-D
|
| All I say is - if you're not good with gore, skip the
| section about the decay process of the affected people,
| it's not pretty.
| Medox wrote:
| At least the lighthouse generators were decommissioned and
| "all RTGs are now gone" (mentioned at the end of the video).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| "Gone" as in cleaned up or as in "they disappeared and we
| have no idea where they are"? Sounds like a mix of both.
| Medox wrote:
| Gone as in taken to/from a boat with a helicopter, as
| seen at the end of the video. What happened afterwards,
| Rosatom knows.
| simonh wrote:
| Except we know some of them did disappear, either washed
| away in storms or carted away by whoever.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| The worlds first nuclear-powered lighthouse in south of
| Baltimore. Nuke-battery removed many years ago. Some friends
| purchased it and made it into a retreat/bed&breakfast.
| https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=423
| hinkley wrote:
| Why would you turn an RTG device into a bed and break...
|
| Oh.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| These are the same types of batteries used on space probes.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| This is kinda what I envisioned when people talked about
| backyard small solar reactors. I wish someone was building a
| commercial venture out of it.
| [deleted]
| hairytrog wrote:
| The materials listed on the Wikipedia page and used by the
| Russians are not practical for large scale use. It's simply too
| dangerous to have that much weapons grade material or bone
| seeking material out in the wild. Some isotopes are better than
| others, and I expect there will be strides using specifically
| generated isotopes that are not weapons grade, are not bone-
| seekers, and have much short half lives (decade not 80+ years),
| and have beta decay.
| namibj wrote:
| What's the issue with Cs-137, then? The gamma radiation?
| Otherwise, is SrTiO3 really that bad? What's the risk there,
| someone stealing it for a dirty bomb?
| kbar13 wrote:
| can you clarify what you mean by bone seeking? i have a very
| rudimentary understanding of radioactive materials
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| He probably means beta emitters, which concentrate in the
| thyroid and bone marrow.
| [deleted]
| arianvanp wrote:
| Strontium has similar properties as calcium and thus ends
| up in your bones when ingested where it will cause
| prolonged damage. Hence bone seeking
| cozzyd wrote:
| Honestly it's difficult to find another energy source for small
| remote deployments in Polar regions, where solar + battery can't
| be used for much of the year. Propane TEG's and methanol fuel
| cells are probably the best suited thing, but they have
| consumables that create logistical problems. Wind can work in
| some places, but a lot of places in Antarctica and Greenland are
| not very windy, and ice loading etc. present problems.
| Retric wrote:
| RTG's are extremely expensive, the USSR made expensive use of
| them for politics not economics.
|
| Remote applications would have lower costs but those should
| give you some idea of the reasons.
| https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites/sti/sti/7267852.pdf
| cozzyd wrote:
| The space ones are expensive partially because weight is an
| important consideration. For a terrestrial RTG, you can use
| Strontium or something else that's much cheaper (but much
| less weight-efficient).
|
| See e.g.
| https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:9398623
| generalizations wrote:
| I wonder if there's any version of that which is legal (and
| feasible?) for a civilian to build and use.
| notJim wrote:
| I found some speculation that you might be able to build
| one out of thorium from smoke detectors and lanterns, as
| in the David Hahn case, but not much. No way this would
| be legal though.
| InspiredIdiot wrote:
| I've never heard of thorium being used in smoke
| detectors. As far as I know it is always Americium,
| including in David Hahn's case.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium-241
| cozzyd wrote:
| well you'll very slowly get some thorium in the decay
| chain :)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The thorium is in the gas mantles.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Well, for the application I was looking into this for
| (remote deployments in Greenland and Antarctica) it would
| be almost certainly politically impossible, so did not
| pursue, but I doubt it's possible to purchase Sr-90 in
| non-negligible quantities as a civilian (you can purchase
| it as a calibration source easily enough, I think, but at
| great expense).
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| 20 years ago, UChicago Scav Hunt had an item on the list:
| "Item 240. A breeder reactor built in a shed, and the boy
| scout badge to prove credit was given where boy scout
| credit was due. [500 points]"
|
| The story of how the Students made it is pretty great!
| https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/homemade-
| breeder-r...
| Retric wrote:
| That's still showing a break even around ~30$/gallon fuel
| costs in 2020 dollars for pure heating applications. It's
| hard to reach those kinds of delivery costs. It's even
| worse when you want to use RTG's for electricity as you add
| complexity and lower efficiency.
| Aperocky wrote:
| It's not hard when you're delivering fuel to one location
| 1000km in desolate wilderness with no road access. Your
| only option is basically ship borne helicopter, and then
| you have to make this trip semi-regularly.
|
| Plus. nuclear material are only expensive because there
| are not enough usage - hence the economy of scale is
| small. They're arguably cheaper in the Soviet Union (even
| if they followed market terms).
| Retric wrote:
| These where used for lighthouses which aren't exactly
| useful if people stay 1000km away from them. Now for
| unmanned Antarctic observation or something then that's a
| possibility, but hardly going to feed economies of scale.
| Outside the Arctic circle solar panels + batteries win
| hands down.
| cozzyd wrote:
| As you probably already know, RTGs were of course
| commonly used in Antarctic weather stations in the past,
| by both the US and others:
|
| https://www.stuff.co.nz/the-
| press/news/104291748/radioactive...
|
| The last was removed in 2015, as far as I know.
| marcinzm wrote:
| You're missing the autonomous part of the equation. An
| RTG and light will run independently with occasional
| checkups for decades. A gas generator will not. So now
| your costs have to account for a permanent local crew,
| sending supplies for them (food, etc.) and constructing a
| building they can live in. That's on top of shipping the
| fuel itself into the desolate location.
| Retric wrote:
| They needed to go to these lighthouses multiple times a
| year even with RTG's, presumably to change bulbs etc.
| Truly remote areas without people don't need lighthouses.
| In that context operate generator N for X hours then swap
| to generator N + 1 and repeat as needed.
|
| The more modern solution for even more remote areas is
| fuel cells which can last significantly longer between
| inspections.
| cozzyd wrote:
| yes, but if you want to leave a device buried in the
| middle of nowhere on the ice sheet for 10 years that
| draws ~30W, an RTG is much simpler (only have to
| transport it once, no moving parts, no need for exhaust,
| etc.).
|
| Delivery and deployment costs to the middle of the ice
| sheet are not cheap.
| Retric wrote:
| If you only need 30W for 10 years then Lithium thionyl
| chloride batteries are a viable option down to -55C. In
| continuous operation waste heat will give you significant
| temperature leeway. That's going to be expensive and very
| heavy, but there really isn't a good option for truly
| remote applications.
|
| 30W is kind of the no mans land of remote power.
| Batteries are becoming seriously impractical, but nothing
| is the clear winner.
| cozzyd wrote:
| I mean, outside of polar regions, solar + battery hybrids
| work well enough year-round. Solar + fuel cell + battery
| hybrids can work in Polar winter if you can transport
| enough fuel, but the exhaust requirement is a problem
| (moving parts + can't let your fuel cell + batteries get
| buried in the snow). The solar panels also need to be
| raised every once in a while (or mounted high enough in
| the first place).
|
| Eventually reversible fuel cells might be a good option
| (use excess solar in the summer to produce methanol or
| whatever, then consume it in winter).
|
| edit... so I need 40,000 of these:
| https://www.batteryjunction.com/xl-205f.html :)
| willyt wrote:
| Lighthouses typically shine a beam up to 20-30 miles,
| depends on height obviously. I would imagine the loads
| would be at least 1kW especially with old fashioned
| incandescent bulbs?
| godelski wrote:
| They are used in space because it is much more difficult to
| use solar beyond Mars. Modern solar has helped in Jovian
| missions but RTGs are still preferred (even Curiosity uses
| a RTG for low solar radiance reasons). And beyond Jupiter
| good luck having a powered device with anything except for
| a RTG.
| cozzyd wrote:
| yes of course, what I mean is why the space RTGs are so
| much more expensive than terrestrial RTGs, where weight
| is not a consideration. For space, it makes sense to use
| the exotic plutonium isotope if it saves on weight.
| godelski wrote:
| Oh yes. Another thing to consider is the weight of the
| titanium that encases the RTG just so you don't fry the
| other electronics. Dealing with radiation in space is
| pretty difficult and radiation shielding in general is
| still a pretty complex problem. On Earth we pretty much
| solve it my mass (more mass == more shielding) but we
| don't have the luxury with space applications. There's a
| lot of advanced composites there and layered material. It
| is a really fascinating subject. There's also people
| trying to harvest some of this energy into usable
| electricity. I worked on one of these devices (focusing
| on betavoltaics) and it isn't going to power your house,
| but you can power things like a heartbeat signal for your
| craft (and of course use it to trickle charge batteries
| on long missions).
| cozzyd wrote:
| I think I remember hearing about photonics coupling to
| isotopes for some sort of nuclear battery? Do you work on
| that?
| godelski wrote:
| I don't work in this space anymore. Some I can't talk
| about but part of what I can talk about is still a pretty
| big problem, which is finding layer ordering, materials,
| thicknesses, etc of the shielding. You have problems like
| that neutrons are absorbed differently than protons,
| alpha particles, and beta particles (all those are
| charged). So you want to use thing like hydrocarbons for
| neutrons (read plastic) and you probably want to dope it.
| BUT there's a big problem that the energy level matters a
| lot. Gadolinium is known as having a good neutron cross
| section, but that is only for thermal neutrons and hot
| neutrons (as you'd find in space) don't see gadolinium
| differently from dense materials like titanium and
| aluminum (good for charged particles). So the problem is
| to layer, dope, etc. And to do that while accounting for
| secondary factors like that you can have materials become
| hot as exposed to radiation and then you also have to
| consider physical shielding. The solution space is
| extremely large and you search it by simulation.
|
| As for getting electricity you can probably imagine that
| if you have two conductive plates that they will get
| charge levels across them and that's a capacitor. There
| are other ways to extract energy though and finding ways
| to do this is very helpful. But there is a theoretical
| limit to the energy and don't expect to replace solar
| panels unless you can capture those particles and use a
| nuclear process instead of an electromagnetic one.
|
| If you're interested in this start searching for
| betavoltaics[0]. That uses the E&M process whereas an RTG
| uses a thermal process. There's nothing stopping you from
| using both though.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
| Aperocky wrote:
| Are RTG only extremely expensive today because of low
| demand/supply and consequently a complete lack of economy of
| scale?
| namibj wrote:
| Yes, pretty much.
|
| E.g. Germany has loads of Sr-90 as a product of their
| fission power plants (typically PWRs fed with low-enriched
| uranium), at least some of which is already vitrified in
| borosilicate glass along with the other high-activity waste
| and currently standing around to cool down so it can
| eventually be stuffed deep into probably a rock salt
| formation.
|
| It's not hard to separate it (and the Cs-137) from the rest
| of the spent fuel, if so desired.
| Retric wrote:
| They require processing of a very high level nuclear waste
| which is extremely nasty to work with and in limited
| supply. So, there really isn't much in the way of economies
| of scale to work towards.
|
| You can think of the upper limit for RTG's as the amount of
| heat generated by spent nuclear fuel which worldwide
| doesn't add up to that much power. Basically RTG's don't
| really generate extra heat just recycle and sort the spent
| fuel by isotope to get a dense power source.
| StillBored wrote:
| Well if we were reprocessing all the fuel in the storage
| ponds of the existing reactors, then the "waste" isotopes
| would probably be a lot less expensive on their own.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| pfdietz wrote:
| Greenland is actually very windy. I was surprised when playing
| with
|
| https://model.energy/
|
| that in some scenarios Greenland has the cheapest power in the
| world.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Depends where! The region around Summit Station (the most
| accessible part of the interior) is not reliably windy, for
| example:
|
| https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=SUM&pro.
| ..
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