[HN Gopher] Oklo has a plan to make tiny nuclear reactors that r...
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Oklo has a plan to make tiny nuclear reactors that run off nuclear
waste
Author : mrfusion
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-07-01 11:50 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| nickpp wrote:
| Finally! Yes! More! More!!!
|
| We need to experiment every day with nuclear power. We need to
| try new things. We need to learn. We need to make mistakes and
| learn from them. We need to conquer this paralyzing fear. We need
| to not be afraid of the possible bad consequences because the
| upside is infinitely better and more important.
|
| We need to continue to improve and evolve our technology. It's
| our only hope.
| jsilence wrote:
| Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?
| orthecreedence wrote:
| The entire planet could burn and the oceans could rise,
| displacing hundreds of millions of people all while droughts
| and famine are widespread.
|
| That's what will go wrong if we don't start looking at
| nuclear.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Nuclear isn't the old low-emissions power source.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Right, it's the only low-emissions power source that is
| available at-scale.
| 7952 wrote:
| In it's current form it isn't scalable compared to
| renewables. Maybe modular reactors will change that.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| We don't need to "start looking at nuclear" we know how to
| do it perfectly well. We just need to start building
| reactors again.
| 8note wrote:
| We used to know how to do it.
|
| The experienced nuclear builders aren't necessarily
| around anymore
| hollerith wrote:
| The French ones are, I think.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It's a bit late to start the experiment if we need 20,000
| working models in the next 6m to avoid climate change.
| That's the issue with nuclear: to late.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Too late is much better than "cannot work at all" which
| is what solar and wind give us. What makes you think
| solar and wind are up to the task _right now_? They
| cannot possibly power our collective needs, and even if
| they could, we have nowhere to store the energy at night
| or on cloudy /calm days.
|
| Energy storage is not a solved problem, and it will not
| be a solved problem for the next decade. In the meantime,
| we need to build nuclear reactors _now_.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You realise you're planning for peak load grid management
| for 50 years after the collapse of society right? No one
| will need to power their ipad when food shortages have
| killed 50% of the population and the rest are fighting a
| war over access to water...
| jsilence wrote:
| Instead of starting research on safe nuclear options, with
| results who knows when, we should go all in TODAY on
| established and safe regenerative energy options available
| right now: Solar and Wind.
|
| Every cent we invest in nuclear research is lost to the
| immediate solutions.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Solar and wind can only generate depending on weather,
| which is now constantly changing in unexpected ways. Good
| luck building battery arrays that can power cities for
| weeks at a time during cloudy periods.
|
| No, nuclear is the only way forward. We know it can work.
| We need to invest now. Solar and wind cannot power our
| collective needs, and even if they could, to build it out
| would require such a massive doubling-down in fossil
| fuels that the planet would be one big desert by the time
| we finished.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| > Every cent we invest in nuclear research is lost to the
| immediate solutions.
|
| This would only be true if 100% of GDP was spent on
| climate solutions. In reality, it's not a zero sum game
| like this. If some people get excited about nuclear and
| want to invest while others are excited about wind and
| solar, then that's great. The more the merrier!
| p1mrx wrote:
| We could fail, and destabilize the climate.
| nickpp wrote:
| We could make some tiny portions of Earth uninhabitable for
| the next few thousand years. Still much, much better than
| making the whole Earth uninhabitable forever, which is what
| we are doing right now.
| Klinky wrote:
| It's not just uninhabitable, someone has to maintain that
| property forever. You don't just put an "abandoned" sign on
| a melted down nuclear reactor and expect the problem to be
| solved. You don't just put the waste in barrels and tanks
| that go into the ground and have them leak into local
| rivers and ground water, which is what we're doing now.
|
| We still need to clean up the nuclear messes from earlier
| decades of nuclear research, a time when we were not afraid
| of the bad consequences of nuclear, and it shows, much to
| our detriment.
| AngryData wrote:
| That is like pointing at a model-T and claiming how
| dangerous cars are and how they are too dangerous for
| people to drive. All of our real nuclear problems are due
| to plants designed in the 50s and 60s, which is only
| around 15 years after nuclear power was first discovered.
| Of course that shit was/is unsafe, they barely understood
| the materials and science they were dealing with, they
| still had xray machines in shoe stores at the time. There
| is no disputing that our nuclear science has come leaps
| and bounds since then and there is no reason to think we
| can't make safe nuclear power plants.
|
| The least we could do is atleast replacing the current 50
| year old plants that are still running today with modern
| safer designs.
| Klinky wrote:
| Where are the Model Ts that are leaking nuclear waste
| into rivers and ground water? The point was that bad
| consequences occurred from "not being afraid of the bad
| consequences of nuclear", and much of the hesitancy and
| cost associated with nuclear today is due to a better
| understanding of its risks and liabilities.
|
| The problem is nuclear is very expensive to build, takes
| forever for ROI, is a huge liability risk that likely no
| private company can tolerate, and a logistical nightmare
| with waste management and proliferation concerns.
|
| I would personally be for it being adopted as a major DoE
| energy independence project where trillions are pumped in
| over 25 years to do it properly, and provide a cheap
| baseload to the population. That's unlikely. Just as
| unlikely as a private company actually being able to come
| through without cutting safety corners to improve ROI, or
| not becoming insolvent and externalizing the cost onto
| society the moment there is a problem.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > expensive to build
|
| Raise the price of fossil fuels by 10x. Then we'll see
| how expensive nuclear is.
|
| > takes forever for ROI
|
| So, better start now!
|
| > huge liability risk that likely no private company can
| tolerate
|
| Fuck the market. State-run reactors. Done.
|
| > logistical nightmare with waste management
|
| Dig a pit, throw it in.
|
| > major DoE energy independence project where trillions
| are pumped in over 25 years to do it properly
|
| Yes, exactly, this is what we need.
|
| There really is no viable alternative to nuclear energy.
| monocasa wrote:
| I thought fast reactors were de facto banned in the US for
| civilian uses because of the proliferation concerns of the
| plutonium generated? Maybe this is exposing the extent of my
| knowledge and not all fast reactors are breeder reactors?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| It is commonly stated that 'recycling nuclear fuel was banned
| by Jimmy Carter and remains banned to this day'. While Jimmy
| Carter did put a moratorium on it in 1977, Regan actually
| lifted it in '81 [1].
|
| [1]
| http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/parekh2/docs/RS...
| alexgmcm wrote:
| Weird! I just saw this mentioned in Joe Scott's recent video on
| Nuclear Waste[1]
|
| I hope it's successful as I feel nuclear fission power has been
| unfairly maligned.
|
| I strongly recommend the book Atomic Accidents by James
| Mahaffey[2] to learn more about how fission power plants work and
| what went wrong at Chernobyl etc. - it's one of my favourite
| books of all-time.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96et8ZGsxJY&t=545s
|
| [2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20579068-atomic-
| accident...
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Great book. One of the chapters is named "The US government
| almost never lost nuclear weapons" if I remember correctly. A
| glimpse into the author's sense of humor.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| Yeah, his other book "Atomic Adventures" was recommended to
| me by my friends and also mentioned in the book "The Future
| of Fusion Energy" by Parisi and Ball.
|
| I'll have to check it out!
| lizknope wrote:
| I subscribe to Tom Scott's youtube channel and I wondered how
| did I miss the video you are talking about.
|
| This is Tom Scott's channel.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/enyay
|
| The video you linked to is interesting but it is created by
| someone named Joe Scott, not Tom Scott.
| alexgmcm wrote:
| Sorry, I meant Joe Scott - I somehow confused myself in the
| process of writing the comment.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| A lot of big countries have significant interests in preventing
| smaller states from acquiring nuclear arms. It is difficult to
| say how much of the FUD around civilian nuclear power was
| planted on purpose by governments.
| lizknope wrote:
| I read the name "Oklo" and thought "that place already had
| nuclear reactors." I assume the company named themselves after
| the natural fission reactors discovered in Oklo, Gabon.
|
| 1.7 billion years ago the concentrations of fissile material and
| groundwater were just right that nuclear fission reactions
| happened naturally.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
| qayxc wrote:
| To me this has way too many signs of vapourware:
|
| * highly complex technology that has been around for decades, yet
| the team seems to lack any experienced members (judging from the
| photo)
|
| * no existing solutions are beyond the test/prototype phase
|
| * pretty renderings in an unrealistic setting
|
| * lots of vague statements regarding the technology, yet they
| already know that the final product will be housed in stylish
| buildings (wtf?)
|
| I don't have much confidence in this company, but I'd be
| pleasantly surprised to be shown wrong in a couple of years.
| myself248 wrote:
| Clever name!
|
| "Oklo" is the name of a region in Gabon with rich uranium
| deposits. In the 1970s, it was noticed that uranium mined from
| the region had a different isotopic makeup than expected, and it
| was characteristic of spent fuel.
|
| Further investigation revealed that, billions of years (many
| half-lives) ago, when the naturally-occurring uranium was much
| "hotter", it was sufficiently concentrated to form a natural
| fission reactor. Groundwater acted as a moderator, and as the
| vein of ore would heat up from the reaction, the water would turn
| to steam, which would form voids in the moderator and slow the
| reaction down. It would cool, water would seep back in, and the
| reactor regulated itself this way for a few hundred thousand
| years before its fuel burned to a concentration too low to
| continue.
|
| Now there's a startup with this name which is gonna make it
| harder to search for, but if that helps solve more problems than
| it creates, more power to them.
| perihelions wrote:
| Imagine the alternate reality, very slightly different from
| ours, where nuclear reactors spontaneously erupted from the
| Earth's surface (in the modern anthropic era). Imagine a Pliny
| trying to make sense of a nuclear Vesuvius.
|
| For anyone who missed HN's interesting feature yesterday: in
| the ancient Roman city of Hierapolis (modern Turkey), there is
| a lethal geological feature that emits invisible CO2. _" But
| get an answer he did, almost immediately. "We saw dozens of
| dead creatures around the entrance: mice, sparrows, blackbirds,
| many beetles, wasps and other insects. So, we knew right away
| that the stories were true."_ And the Romans built a temple on
| top of this mysterious death -- and they called this temple the
| "Plutonium"!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27672375 "Hierapolis,
| Turkey's mysterious 'portal to the underworld' (bbc.com)"
| akiselev wrote:
| Imagine the religious imagery if, instead of burning to death
| or suffocating in the ash, volcano eruption victims developed
| acute radiation sickness and stumbled into nearby villages
| puking their guts out and melting from the inside out.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Love that they refer to a reactor that ran unsupervised for
| millennia without any major incidents ;-)
| gnulinux wrote:
| It probably harmed some organisms, just not any organism that
| could complain about the adverse effects to us humans.
|
| This thing happened 1.7 billion years ago, in Precambrian
| eon. So when this natural nuclear reactor was active there
| weren't many animals around anywhere in the world, let alone
| in that particular spot.
| tim333 wrote:
| Or at least no incidents that got reported to the media.
| rbanffy wrote:
| No humans were harmed in the operation of the reactor.
| drran wrote:
| But it waste is harmful even today. We should dig it out
| of ground and safely store it under ground.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| If there are any science fiction readers here, one of these
| factors into the plot of _Manifold: Space_ by Stephen Baxter
| (not really a spoiler).
|
| It's one of a trilogy about the Fermi Paradox, written in the
| Asimov tradition. I can't recommend them highly enough.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Space-Stephen-Baxter/dp/0345...
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Illinois EnergyProf did a pretty good video on this!
|
| Natural Nuclear Reactor / 9m26s => https://youtu.be/pMjXAAxgR-M
| yellow_lead wrote:
| The article mentions they want to have these reactors unguarded
| and running without a human present. It seems dangerous to me,
| but at least for the security portion, I could imagine some kind
| of physical barriers and camera setup that would allow it. As for
| having no maintenance person there, I think it's a bit more
| risky.
| natch wrote:
| I understand stealth mode for startups, but the secretive,
| shadowy web presence in combination with nuclear baggage makes
| them feel a little sinister.
|
| It seems like being involved with such a historically fraught
| energy source they would want to come out of the shadows and into
| the sunlight, so to speak.
| minitoar wrote:
| For the past idk 10 years I've felt like nuclear power was
| really on the way out but over the past like 24 months I've
| noticed a huge resurgence in support for these types of
| projects. Maybe that's just my bubble but it seemed like a
| serious inflection.
| natch wrote:
| Could be PR spend.
|
| Or people are starting to notice climate change, and aren't
| aware that large scale batteries exist.
|
| Also people divesting from oil (which will still remain
| hugely useful and beneficial for a long time) want to
| diversify into other energy areas.
|
| Then there is lobbying. Nuclear often has big ticket projects
| that don't have to foot the bill for their own costs (the
| nuclear industry has been made immune from liability under US
| law at least) so there's a lot of money to be made and once
| you build the thing, consumers who don't have other options
| are at your mercy as it's a single source you control.
| shadilay wrote:
| Not to be confused with Onkalo the spent nuclear fuel disposal
| site.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Do not worry. If USA stop it. These will go to china. And got it
| developed. Without regulation or worry. We are fine!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| China has no regulations? That...seems kinda wrong.
| Accujack wrote:
| I think this is an interesting effort, but I question their fuel
| source - despite common perceptions, there's not a lot of
| suitable material around that could be recycled in this way, and
| what is available is of non uniform composition - like the waste
| from the experimental reactor design they mention. That factor
| could make reprocessing the stuff into fuel suitable for a given
| micro design expensive.
|
| It's great that they're trying to use waste material to reduce
| the waste stream, but that's far from the biggest problem new
| reactor designs face... by volume, nuclear waste produced by
| power plants just isn't that much material. If these folks were
| somehow saying they could recycle the waste generated over
| decades of bomb making, that would be worthwhile... but that's
| not really usable waste.
| hairytrog wrote:
| A good example of solving the wrong problem.
| _n_b_ wrote:
| I have some very recent, very specific domain knowledge in this
| area; there is more low-burnup ex-research reactor material,
| off-spec material, etc. out there looking for a good home than
| you might imagine---especially at micro-reactor quantities.
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