[HN Gopher] More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months th...
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More invested in nuclear fusion in last 12 months than past decade
Author : bilsbie
Score : 650 points
Date : 2022-07-23 20:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.growthbusiness.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.growthbusiness.co.uk)
| rep_movsd wrote:
| We already have clean energy - its called Fission, all we need is
| to start doing it at scale
| mkl95 wrote:
| Good news. But let's not forget that fission is the present and
| near future of nuclear energy. And it just works.
| Kukumber wrote:
| They should have invested in education 20 years ago
|
| Vulture capitalist always show up during the last mile after
| government (us, the people) paid for kickstarting everything
|
| What's sad is China already ahead despite all of that
|
| https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-12-31/China-s-artificial-sun...
|
| https://eurasiantimes.com/artificial-sun-china-claims-design...
| toveja wrote:
| To those interested in discussion outside of HN, there is a
| discord community [0] with professional, academic, and hobby
| fusion afficionados.
|
| [0] https://discord.gg/Rcum9zkBtg
| LegitShady wrote:
| Discord is a black hole in the internet. People have
| discussions you can't search for and isn't indexed on Google
| etc.
|
| It's convenient but it's worse than a forum for creating
| knowledge people can search through later. It's a shame it's
| used for such interesting discussion.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| It's a chat room. The conversations are disposable, it is
| part of the medium. Having a record of discussion is not
| really what interests me about instant messaging.
| _dain_ wrote:
| > People have discussions you can't search for and isn't
| indexed on Google etc.
|
| this is a feature not a bug. the real problem is lack of user
| ownership over data, not lack of searchability.
| toveja wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. What would be your
| suggestion/alternatives?
| krallja wrote:
| > it's worse than a forum for creating knowledge people can
| search through later
|
| A forum.
| willis936 wrote:
| I personally like reddit for public discussions. r/fusion
| used to be a ghost town with crackpots a few years. These
| days there are occasional good discussions and the
| crackpots are chased off.
| alexnewman wrote:
| Finally. I wonder if what's going on in ukraine has helped
| investment.
| pixiemaster wrote:
| I love the concept of fusion from a scientific point. I'd love to
| see even more money put into this.
|
| But for real world deployment, we can have decentralized systems
| that have an ROI of 6yrs (Solar) and 10 yrs (Wind), - i think
| that's the thing we should be doubling down on NOW.
| [https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/145C...]
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| It means we are closer to success when we see a lot more VC
| funding of nuclear fusion versus government (taxpayer) funding.
| VCs don't have the timeline or ability to lose money without much
| consequence or blame like the government does.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If VC's are so great, they could have invested in fusion 20
| years ago and presumably they'd have it solved by now. Why
| didn't they?
|
| They didn't because they don't have the guts to create entire
| new branch of science.
|
| Once the government has built research laboratiries, trained
| physicists and engineers, built prototypes, waited untill those
| engineers come up with viables plans, then the VC are ready to
| swoop in and take all the credit.
|
| Thats fine if Venture capital can't make 60 year investments.
| Whats not cool, is everyone else buying the narrative that we
| don't need government funding for fundamental research, that
| VCs will solve all problems in the world as long as we let them
| run wild and don't tax them
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| It could also mean there are lots more rich people who want to
| spend money on a gamble to "save the world" and don't care to
| do sufficient due diligence to dig below the fancy slide decks
| they get spoon fed in the board room every quarter.
| lven wrote:
| You're better off donating money to fusion companies directly
| than paying taxes to the government. Wish musk had donated
| his taxesto companies last year instead.
| TT-392 wrote:
| Maybe it is only 19 years in the future this time
| Calmanimal wrote:
| lven wrote:
| Fusion is generally touted by many as an energy "Holy Grail."
| Indeed, it appears to have similar qualities, being both
| perpetually elusive and miraculous, able to solve all mankind's
| problems. Media reporting tends to discuss the benefits of fusion
| with misleading and false statements and no discussion of
| fusion's negative attributes. The financial and practical
| perspective of fusion based power is missing. I've written a post
| about this here: https://lvenneri.com/blog/ConFusion. I cover
| fusion's issues compared to fission. In particular: far worse
| neutron and gamma damage, 10x more demanding heat transfer,
| parasitic power draws, 50-100x larger radiological waste volume,
| higher financial and nuclear accident risk compared to new new
| micro reactors, higher cost by any metric, similar or worse
| proliferation characteristics, etc. My aim was to add a
| dissenting perspective on the practicality of near-term fusion
| energy systems.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I believe that there might be a way to have a compact and
| efficient fusion reactor which we just don't know yet (and a time
| traveller would be able to "hold my beer" us into it)
|
| For example, there's this plasma-producing microwave + cut grape
| trick, what if you use something like this to supply really hot
| deuterium plasma?
| jleahy wrote:
| Then you get super hot deuterium plasma, which is unconfined
| and so won't fuse.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Maybe you can generate it in one place and confine it in the
| other? Not dissimilar to how ICEs work. Produce plasma and
| then burn (fuse) it in pulses.
| willis936 wrote:
| That's actually exactly what existing MCF machines do. The
| gyrotron (ECRH, same as a microwave's magnetron) resonant
| frequency is tuned to the confinement field strength of the
| plasma so it absorbs the energy. On top of that there's a
| vacuum so air doesn't pull all the heat away and a magnetic
| bottle so the plasma doesn't touch the wall. Fusion is _very_
| far away from happening spontaneously on Earth.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| There's a huge amount of hype in fusion these days. Companies are
| getting big investments just by saying "we're over unity." None
| of their investors will recoup any money.
|
| Getting above unity is important but it's still a very long way
| from _systemic_ over unity of the entire lifecycle of the process
| that turns fusion into electricity on the grid. And that simply
| won 't happen in my lifetime or most of your lifetimes.
|
| What _will_ likely happen during our lifetimes is we develop
| large-scale electricity storage mechanisms. Together with
| decentralized microgrids, storage will enable most of the world
| 's electricity to be generated by renewables. The sun is a giant
| fusion engine, and it's the only fusion engine that will be
| practical for us during at least the next 50 years.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I think investments are happening because recent progress in
| this space is indicating that this might in fact happen in the
| next decade or so. The cliche that fusion reactors are
| perpetually 30 years away, might have actually been correct up
| to about 20 years ago.
|
| There are no guarantees here of course, but there are now quite
| a few companies acting like they are going to get their first
| test plants up and running in the next ten or so years. From
| there to commercialization is of course still a long and risky
| path. But it's very different once you can prove that the
| process works and more energy comes out then goes in.
|
| As you say, fusion reactors will have to compete with
| absolutely dirt cheap solar, wind, and storage. As well as with
| future fission plants that may or may not become cheaper than
| the current state of the art (which is super expensive). Just
| getting things working is not going to be good enough. It will
| need to work cheaply.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The biggest problem to take any of these companies seriously,
| even the MIT spin-off, is that no one has ever attempted yet
| to extract a single watt of electricity from the fusion
| reaction. The part where the thermal energy is actually
| converted to electrical power is still entirely at the
| theoretical design level. While it is nowhere near as complex
| scientifically as actually containing the plasma, it will
| still be a huge engineering challenge.
|
| When these companies come and claim that their better magnets
| will allow them to supply power to the grid 3 years from now
| when they haven't even arrived where JET is yet, so they
| haven't even started in the unknowns of actually running the
| reactor continously and extracting power from it, it is clear
| that they are gifting with their timeline. And if they are
| willing to lie about the timeline, I don't see why anyone
| believes them about the fundamental technology as well.
| tim333 wrote:
| Helion are planning for systemic returns over unity quite soon
| really.
| acchow wrote:
| Private Investments usually need returns within a 10-15 year
| time scale. Once practical fusion gets to that point, we should
| expect money to come pouring in which will help make it a
| reality.
|
| We're seeing something similar happening in self driving cars
| Terr_ wrote:
| My pet theory is that it's no coincidence the self-driving-
| car investment craze started the same time the baby-boom
| generation started to enter "grandpa can't drive himself
| anymore" territory.
|
| In other words, I suspect it's not fueled by a _technology_
| trend, but by trying to capture a potential customer trend.
| [deleted]
| cypress66 wrote:
| It seems like a stretch. Self driving car investments
| mostly coincide with AI getting to a good enough level that
| it seem feasible.
| borissk wrote:
| When all these starups fail to deliver anything of value in a few
| years, the investors will disappear.
|
| Commercial fusion power is such a huge challenge IMHO there are
| only two ways we can get there currently: ITER/DEMO (if it
| doesn't get overcome by bureaucracy and the members don't loose
| interest in funding it) or Elon Musk (who is probably the only
| person who can attract the top talent needed, motivate it to work
| day and night and secure the funding).
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Musk doesn't attract talent - the wealth does that, Elon
| himself is a negative.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Yes, clearly that's why SpaceX was successful in an industry
| where the adage was "How do you become a millionaire in
| aviation? Start with a billion!".
| Kukumber wrote:
| SpaceX is not successful as an industry
|
| It is a government funded project at this point
| borissk wrote:
| Kukumber wrote:
| Wtf, that's not Putin propaganda
|
| You just have to get curious about who their customers
| are
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-
| government-su...
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Most of SpaceX's funding as well as most of their
| launches are private.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Weird my comment mentioning the source got removed, it
| was just a link so maybe it got detected as spam
|
| Here is the link of the article:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-
| government-su...
|
| You have to be curious about who are their customers
|
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/will-the-ukraine-
| war...
|
| The EU coming to subsidize them even more
|
| And the fact that they are not profitable says it all
| dotnet00 wrote:
| >Here is the link of the article:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-list-
| government-su...
|
| Business Insider is well known for twisting things to fit
| their biases. Case in point, the first two items on that
| list are the equivalent of the government paying a pen
| company to provide them with pens after determining that
| said company was the best one to supply them.
|
| Relating to SpaceX, the only 'real' subsidy there is the
| $15 million towards Boca Chica. Although they've paid
| twice that in donations to local schools there.
|
| >You have to be curious about who are their customers
| >https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/will-the-
| ukraine-war... >The EU coming to subsidize them even more
|
| Same here, they'd be paying for the service of launching
| a payload on a SpaceX rocket. Should SpaceX just not do
| business with governments? They happen to be one of the
| few people with a reliable rocket available right now
| that has a short enough lead time.
|
| >And the fact that they are not profitable says it all
|
| Again, dishonest take. They're building technologies with
| high setup costs, of course they aren't taking profits,
| they're taking all the money made from Falcon 9 and
| Falcon Heavy and putting it back into Starship and
| Starlink.
|
| Edit: Oh and of course none of the government money
| mentioned there accounts for the majority of their
| funding, which at the moment is largely driven by private
| funding rounds (because contrary to your biases,
| investors can see SpaceX's success and potential for even
| bigger successes) and previous F9 related profits.
| game-of-throws wrote:
| Has SpaceX disclosed whether they're profitable or still
| burning investor money?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| They obviously aren't profitable right now since they're
| working on two megaprojects simultaneously, but the
| Falcon 9 program is obviously profitable and clearly
| successful given their flight rate and economics.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| It's happening!
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| The only true form of green energy other than geothermal.
|
| fission, solar, wind, waterfall energy all have their own
| negative environmental impacts
| joak wrote:
| Geothermal, and all thermal power energy, have a big issue:
| thermal pollution.
|
| You need a lot of water for the cooling phase of the
| thermodynamic cycle that transform heat into electricity.
|
| That's why during drought episodes fission plants have to be
| stopped.
|
| There is however a non-thermal path to fusion energy,
| aneutronic fusion with direct energy conversion. In this
| scheme, the fusion reaction produces no neutrons and the
| kinetic energy of ions is directly converted to electricity.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Given how much zero carbon warm water we need, it's easy to
| see zero carbon thermal pollution as a feature rather than a
| bug.
|
| https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/ndd/workshops/nucogen/presentations...
| Digital28 wrote:
| This is great news.
|
| That said, what the literal fuck -- we've previously been
| investing 1/850,000th of global GDP in one of 4-5 truly promising
| energy technologies while the world burns before our eyes?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It is doubtful that fusion will even be cheaper than old-
| crappy-PWR-fission.
|
| It is very very very doubtful it will beat wind/solar as they
| continue to drop in cost, at least not for probably... 40
| years. We're looking at 10-20 years to a viable commercial
| design and construction.
|
| I place fusion like next-gen fission: worthy of continued
| investment in research and maybe some subsidized consumer
| plants (if/when fusion becomes viable).
|
| Even with viable fusion, there will likely be
| degradation/radioactivity of the power generation cores from
| fast neutrons and other problems.
| barkingcat wrote:
| the profits in 1 year from silicon valley can solve world
| hunger by buying every single man woman child 3 meals a day,
| every day.
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| source?
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| 700 million people live in poverty
|
| 3 meals per day, 5$ per meal for 365 days is
| 3,832,500,000,000$
| koverda wrote:
| beans, $700 / metric ton [1] rice, $500 / metric ton [2]
|
| a meal of 65g dry rice and 55g dry beans per person.
|
| 700m * 3 = 2.1b meals per day 115,500 tons beans = $80.9m
| 136,500 tons rice = $68.3m
|
| Total $149.1m/day
|
| I'm sure at these quantities you can get much better prices
| of rice and beans, even just browsing on alibaba. I'd guess
| we can probably get that down under $100m from alibaba.
| Probably even lower at the quantities we're talking about.
|
| 1 - https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/red-bean-
| wholesales-s...
|
| 2 - https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Jasmine-Rice-
| Long-Gra...
| NavinF wrote:
| You didn't include shipping. UPS isn't gonna deliver
| canned food to each tent in places like this: https://en.
| wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_War#Humanitarian_crisis
| [deleted]
| stuartd wrote:
| If meals cost 5$ all over the planet then there would be
| mass starvation
| adrian_b wrote:
| Yes, indeed.
|
| Even in the European Union, it is possible to pay around
| $5 for all the meals of a day, including not only
| adequate quantities of vegetables and fruits, but also a
| moderate amount of chicken meat.
|
| However, for that, you must be cost-conscious, because
| from the same shops you could buy an equivalent quantity
| of food, but at a price even 10 times greater, when you
| choose to buy processed foods, even those as cheap as
| bread, instead of buying only raw ingredients.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Five bucks? 1kg of beans in Sweden is like 3 bucks.
| stuartd wrote:
| Still doesn't stop the world burning, though
| no_wizard wrote:
| I'd love to see a Manhattan project for nuclear fusion
| research. Just pour money into it until we crack it. I think
| out of all the energy alternatives it's the most game changing.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| On one hand, you had "traditional" companies (oil, coal,
| gas,...) lobbying against it, and on the other hand, you had
| the "green" organizations lobbying (and protesting) against it.
| champtar wrote:
| And if you combine both hands you get Greenpeace energy
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I hate to say it, but this is the result of fossil fuel
| interests running the largest [1] economy in the world. We will
| literally spend 1 trillion dollars a year on war in the middle
| east and associated commitments but couldn't bother to spend a
| few billion on fusion research. Absurd.
|
| [1] until recently
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Fusion isn't a silver bullet even if it works. If it costs more
| than solar+battery then it's worthless.
| otikik wrote:
| I agree the cost is important. I disagree in the breaking
| point at witch it's "not worth it". To me, assuming our
| battery tech doesn't find a similar breakthrough before, if
| fusion reaches _one order of magnitude_ above the cost of
| solar, it is worth it, as a backup. Better to have it and use
| it when there's clouds instead of coal or gas
| jayd16 wrote:
| They did say solar _and battery._. So taking it literally I
| think they 're correct that if we had a battery technology
| such that it provided consistent cheaper energy we wouldn't
| need a hypothetical nuclear backup.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| If you plug your solar panel into some water when you have
| surplus sun you get hydrogen which burns fine in a combined
| cycle plant.
|
| If that's too annoying to store you can get it hot and
| squeeze it over some nickel to get methane.
|
| Electrolyzation becomes cheaper than mining methane for
| hydrogen (and thus ammonia) production if solar hits the
| $0.2-0.3/Watt threshold somewhere (which is predicted to
| happen in 3-7 years).
|
| It's complicated and expensive, but I'm not sure I'd bet on
| a sabatier reactor (or hydrogen storage if it gets cheap),
| an electrolyzer and 4x the solar panels being more
| expensive than a fusion reactor with the average output of
| 1 unit of solar.
|
| Plus the sabatier thing means we don't have to upgrade all
| the heating furnaces and expand the grid to have 8x the
| capacity.
|
| Fusion will be real handy where power density is king
| though. And if there's some non thermal way of getting work
| out of it, I can see it being cheaper.
| tremon wrote:
| No, this is way too shortsighted. Fusion allows us to use
| other energy sources than our own sun, which means it's
| essential for viable space missions, and we won't need to
| compete with the rest of nature (including agriculture!) for
| our energy needs.
|
| Hydroponics with fusion technology allows us to produce food
| without relying on the sun at all. I'd say that alone is
| worth the investment.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| I totally agree in the long term for space travel. But for
| our current energy use, it could be useless if it costs
| even a little bit too much. Kind of like solar
| concentrators are worthless because PV got too cheap.
| pfdietz wrote:
| DT fusion, which most of these efforts are focusing on,
| utterly sucks for use in space. It produces heat in
| materials, just like fission, except at far lower
| power/mass and with way more complexity.
|
| As for the future, beamed power will work out to
| interstellar distances, so energy sources other than our
| Sun (and other stars) aren't necessarily required.
| willis936 wrote:
| Does beamed power also work for return trips?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Sure. And beamed power also potentially allows one to
| cool a vehicle more effectively than radiating from a
| black body, by exploiting anti-Stokes scattering of laser
| light.
|
| (From your question you might have been thinking of laser
| propelled light sails. These are best at speeds high
| enough that fusion is out of the picture.)
| edem wrote:
| False. At this point environmental impact trumps everything
| else in my mind.
| Teever wrote:
| Not at all.
|
| There will always be places where solar+battery isn't viable.
| Northern Canada and Alaska come to mind.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| There are solar panels in use on svalbard island, Norway.
| Far north of Alaska
|
| Solar needs more space in such locations but space is
| abundant and also nobody lives there so you dont need much
| power anyway.
|
| The sun shines 24 hrs a day during summer, so you can
| generate lots of hydrogen for use during winter.
| adventured wrote:
| Along with small and or very high population density
| nations.
|
| India is going to end up with perhaps two billion people
| and will have extraordinary population density/spacing
| problems. They're going to desperately need huge numbers of
| nuclear fission power plants or fusion plants to provide
| for that. They will not have the space for epic scale solar
| farms. Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Bangladesh,
| Pakistan, Philippines, Vietnam, Israel, Belgium,
| Netherlands (among others) are in the same space vs
| population situation. And given the population explosion
| across parts of the Middle East and Africa, it's a
| certainty nations in those regions will have the same
| problem as well.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > They will not have the space for epic scale solar
| farms. ...space vs population situation.
|
| Your math is totally wrong, space was never an issie for
| solar. It tales 100x less space for a coutry to cover
| it's power needs with solar, than it does for a country
| to grow it's own food and feed it's own people. So every
| country thats not a city-state, like Vatikan, is fine.
|
| All the challaneges of Solar are around intermittency,
| cost and ofcourse it's less viable in northern
| lattitudes. But none of them are around space.
| eftychis wrote:
| Also we are talking about totally different load over time
| characteristics. And we don't want time plus weather to
| dictate our industrial and shipping power needs.
|
| Solar is great but not simply alone. (Latitude is less of
| an issue as (proper) power systems are interconnected
| markets that sell/buy excess load.)
| Digital28 wrote:
| Don't forget that we're perpetually one temper tantrum away
| from nuclear winter now, which would cripple all solar
| infrastructure for years. I'm actually a little surprised
| the DoD hasn't deeply invested in fusion for this reason
| alone.
| danaris wrote:
| Solar + battery isn't much help for
|
| - under the earth
|
| - under the ocean
|
| - deeper into space
|
| Granted, we don't need a lot of power in these places _right
| now_. But if we have the _option_...then maybe we 'll find
| some good ways to use it.
| freemint wrote:
| I don't understand the udner the earth part. We've been
| able to transport power into mine shafts for pretty long.
| LegitShady wrote:
| its not worthless either way. plenty of places that dont get
| large amounts of solar radiation during some seasons where
| fusion could be useful
| belorn wrote:
| battery for solar installation is at the point where between
| 2-6hrs of capacity can be economical viable.
|
| Maybe in a few more years/decade/s we will reach a point
| where in some places in the world it will be economical
| viable to have exclusive solar and battery, and that assuming
| prices will continue to drop and that there won't be any
| resource or physical limitations. Then we got colder climates
| where solar + battery is unlikely to ever become viable.
| Exports of solar generated green hydrogen could solve that
| assuming that the technology for that becomes cheap enough.
|
| Multiple different directions where specific technologies
| could be economical dominant in the future.
| grej wrote:
| Totally disagree. Solar + battery will never match the energy
| density of fusion.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Solar is basically indirect fusion.
| Ekaros wrote:
| So is all other energy production methods we use... Apart
| from some fraction of geothermal.
| scatters wrote:
| And tidal.
| delecti wrote:
| And even that, the heavy elements of the earth (basically
| anything heavier than Helium) only exist because of the
| sun's predecessor, making the heat from the core also
| just recycling from fusion.
| [deleted]
| kadonoishi wrote:
| Tidal would rely on orbital energy.
| ksaxena wrote:
| Well, with that logic, coal is also indirect fusion
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Solar is less indirect than they. It's like if we made
| our own fusion reactor and rather than using it to boil
| water close by to generate steam, we put the water a few
| miles out.
| gruturo wrote:
| Yeah. And Wind, Gas, Hydro, etc.
|
| Basically everything except fission, tidal and a portion
| of geothermal. Admittedly it's not a terribly useful
| classification.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Fission is just solar from different star.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The energy in fission ultimately came from gravitational
| collapse, not fusion.
| epistasis wrote:
| And fusion will never be able to stop emitting massive
| amounts of waste heat that must be dealt with somehow.
|
| I'm not sure what benefit density provides, especially
| since people obsessed with density seem to only focus on
| the reaction chamber, which is the smallest part of the
| massive building and heat rejection apparatus that will be
| needed.
|
| Rejecting waste heat is a real difficulty, and part of the
| reason that's France's fission fleet is at less than 50%
| capacity right now.
|
| Thermal electricity production has a chance of becoming
| obsolete compared to direct conversion of photons into
| electricity. When solar plus storage costs less than steam
| turbines plus heat rejection, then it doesn't matter how
| cheap or dense the fusion part is in terms of economics.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| Why do we need high energy density? Are you imagining a
| future society with much higher energy use?
| paconbork wrote:
| One advantage of other technologies over solar is space
| efficiency. Obviously we're not physically lacking in space
| to install solar, but when even solar farms installed in the
| desert can be shut down by "climate activists" [1], then we
| really need all the help we can get
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/technology-government-and-
| politic...
| boomskats wrote:
| The article you linked to states this as the reason for the
| project being scrapped:
|
| > But a group of residents organized as "Save Our Mesa"
| argued such a large installation would be an eyesore and
| could curtail the area's popular recreational activities --
| biking, ATVs and skydiving -- and deter tourists from
| visiting sculptor Michael Heizer's land installation,
| "Double Negative."
|
| I also searched the page and the word 'climate' doesn't
| appear even once. Why do you consider this to be an example
| of 'climate activists' shutting down a solar farm project,
| and do you have any other (actual) examples of it
| happening?
| paconbork wrote:
| The article mentions both "conservationists" and
| "endangered species advocates", who I believe tend to
| consider themselves (and are considered by others to be)
| environmentalists. Here's an example of a wing of the
| Nevada Democratic Party (who according to their bio, want
| a #GreenNewDeal) also being against the development:
| (edit, forgot the link: https://twitter.com/LeftCaucus/st
| atus/1374527780034015244)
|
| For another actual example of this happening, see the
| scaling back of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| That's the biggest reach I've ever heard.
|
| Those are NIMBYS who want their view. Maybe with a mix of
| oil lobbyists.
| jholman wrote:
| You appear to think that "conservationist", "endangered
| species advocate" and "environmentalist" are all synonyms
| for "climate activist"? Your previous comment claimed
| there was opposition from "climate activists", and these
| are not examples of that. The BattleBorn situation seems
| to be about about tourism and similar values (not climate
| activism), the Ivanpah situation looks like it's about
| species conservation (not climate activism).
|
| Don't get me wrong, I am very frustrated by people who
| see themselves as environmentalists, for whom climate
| change (and thus non-carbon energy sources) is not the
| top priority. I think they have wrong priorities. But
| that doesn't mean they're hypocrites, they're just (IMO)
| wrong.
|
| All that said, I agree with your topline observation that
| we need all the help we can get.
| paul80808 wrote:
| Exactly. The past of fusion has been grim, but the future looks
| (probably) bright. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-
| book-review-the-f...
| toveja wrote:
| I wouldn't say the (recent) past was grim, but rather that
| the technology to build an _affordable_ commercial device had
| not yet been developed yet. We designed and built ITER at
| such a large size and cost (EUR20 billion) since high
| temperature superconducting magnets were not yet available.
|
| In the meantime, all of the experimental devices (JET, AUG,
| EAST, DIII-D, etc.,) have been gathering evidence on how to
| operate ITER when it is turned on, and not necessarily
| focused on achieving breakeven.
| stormbrew wrote:
| > We designed and built ITER at such a large size and cost
| (EUR20 billion) since high temperature superconducting
| magnets were not yet available.
|
| This is one of those numbers that only seem big without
| context. Medium-sized cities spend more than this on
| interchanges and highway development over shorter timespans
| than any of the various multi-decade price tags that get
| thrown around for ITER.
| toveja wrote:
| I agree.
|
| The hefty price tag seems smaller when considering the
| development and design of ITER began during the cold war.
|
| The literal size is definitely big even without context,
| which is why it has the nickname: gigantomak :D.
| dtagames wrote:
| Doesn't IETR consume more power than it produces? Fusion
| (like solutions for aging fission plants and their waste
| products) always seems just around the corner -- yet never
| arrives.
| orzig wrote:
| For me, it was eye opening to inside its progression in
| terms of dollars, not years. It's barely had the chance
| to get started.
| samhain wrote:
| Have you heard of MITs SPARC reactor? It's way more
| interesting than ITER. It is 3x smaller, with Q greater
| than 10 (compared to ITERs ~10). It's also slated to be
| finished -before- ITER.
| willis936 wrote:
| 3x smaller major radius. 42x smaller plasma volume.
| nilsbunger wrote:
| This was an awesome overview of current state of fusion
| attempts!
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If you look more into it, it's not clear at all that fusion is
| actually a promising source of power. None of the currently
| contemplated technologies have any realistic chance of
| producing power anywhere near competitively in cost, even
| ignoring the huge research costs left to get there (no
| currently planned fusion experiment has any hope of producing
| more power than it consumes).
| ac29 wrote:
| > no currently planned fusion experiment has any hope of
| producing more power than it consumes
|
| ITER [1] is expected to produce more thermal energy than it
| consumes and is currently under construction. No electricity
| though.
|
| The follow up plant, DEMO [2], should produce electricity
| (750MW).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMOnstration_Power_Plant
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Yes, I should have said electrical power. ITER isn't even
| attempting to produce any. DEMO is a concept, not a planned
| facility; the plans will be drawn up based on the results
| of ITER, hopefully by 2030. Note that DEMO won't even be a
| particular plant, several countries participating in ITER
| are hoping to go on to construct DEMO plants.
| lispm wrote:
| > follow up plant, DEMO [2], should produce electricity
| (750MW)
|
| If it will ever be built and then go online. Which is
| highly unlikely given the slow progress of ITER and its
| very difficult problems - some it even does not try to
| solve. Like getting enough Tritium:
| https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-
| run...
|
| 750MW (again using thermal energy, which is probably not
| the future of electricity production) from such an
| expensive & complex device? Probably you would need pools
| of several fusion power plants, since it is unlikely that
| one fusion power plant will run for a longer periods of
| time. Maybe a pool of six would provide two running (just a
| wild guess).
|
| The technical problems will be huge and the costs gigantic.
| I can't imagine how this will be competitive when in
| production (with outputs in tens of Gigawatts, to make any
| impact) in 2060 or later.
| more_corn wrote:
| What if I told you commercially viable fusion power has been 10
| years away for the last 40 years? What if I told you it always
| will be?
|
| Investment in something that might not pay off is wise if it
| does, and foolish if it doesn't.
| orzig wrote:
| I think the people who said "10 years away "we're assuming it
| would get actual serious investment. I would argue that this
| is year 1
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Indeed, fusion has never been a certain number of years
| away, it's only ever been number of billions of dollars
| away, as projected here [1].
|
| Though, luckily, it looks like that was a little over-
| pessimistic: it's not like the field has been sitting on
| its thumbs despite having, in terms relative to the
| potential, negligible funding: [2].
|
| [1]: https://imgur.com/3vYLQmm.png
|
| [2]: https://phys.org/news/2021-11-unveiling-steady-fusion-
| energy...
| api wrote:
| The world burning is the basis of the economy for dozens of
| petrostates and some of the world's largest corporations.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I can't remember who said it but I remember reading a quote one
| time to the effect that the man who invented a new form of
| energy for the world without also inventing a new heat sink
| would be history's greatest monster. Not sure I agree, but does
| give one pause if prone to pessimism as I am.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Perhaps this was referring to humanity's use of fossil fuels?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| no, fossil fuels aren't a new form of energy. The
| implication would be that a new form of energy would just
| be used with all the other forms of energy, it may also
| have been a new cheap form of energy in the quote, implying
| that we would take a cheap form of energy and overuse it so
| that the world burned faster.
| kadoban wrote:
| I don't get it. Why would a new form of energy need a new
| heat sink?
|
| Wouldn't any energy we can realistically generate be a drop
| in the bucket compared to what the Sun throws at us every
| second? And even if not, what would a heat sink do about it?
| I think I'm missing something.
| rainsford wrote:
| I'd love to see viable nuclear fusion power, but the lack of
| more investment at the moment doesn't really seem unreasonable.
| As you said, there are a number of other green alternatives,
| including traditional nuclear fission power, that have proven
| they can be real alternatives to fossil fuels and that would
| benefit from continued investment.
|
| Unless I've missed something, nuclear fusion meanwhile has yet
| to demonstrate realistic commercial power generation, even as a
| proof of concept or a complete path to get to that point. In
| other words, more research is definitely worthwhile, but it
| also seems possible it will be a dead end at least in the near
| term. It's hard to argue prioritizing that over other things
| that have been generating real commercial power for decades.
| I'm all in favor of an all-of-the-above approach, but
| prioritization almost always has to be the reality.
| Digital28 wrote:
| It's an equal level of insanity that technologies like
| thorium breeder reactors haven't been getting whole number
| percentages of first world budgets, especially considering
| how extremely high of a priority climate change has become
| and how costly the alternatives (e.g., disaster mitigation)
| are getting.
| twawaaay wrote:
| Budgets are decided by elected officials and elected
| officials are steered by their polling numbers.
|
| Out of all sources of energy only atomic energy is
| something that we can practically scale at the moment to
| cover almost all our needs (air travel and maritime
| shipping being notable exceptions). We just need to think a
| bit harder how to ensure this is done responsibly and
| safely. Not saying it is an easy problem, but I think the
| issue is too little resources are devoted to solving it. I
| would say this probably isn't harder than sending a man to
| the Moon. It is just something that should be possible to
| fix practically with existing technology and just good
| design.
|
| The cost of humanity that can't decide on what needs to be
| done is that we are still reliant on fossil fuels and are
| distracting ourselves with half measures that have a lot of
| problems that in hindsight were pretty obvious. Like solar
| energy -- only works when the sun is up, is difficult to
| scale and we still haven't figured out how to store energy
| for when it is needed.
|
| Our children will curse us.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "Out of all sources of energy only atomic energy is
| something that we can practically scale at the moment to
| cover almost all our needs"
|
| ... what?
|
| Criticism 1: you'd need, what, like 100 nuclear plants
| planned and approved? If you started now, maybe in three
| years you'd get like ... 10 approved. five years maybe
| 20-30.
|
| Criticism 2: nuclear is not price competitive with
| current wind/solar installations, and CERTAINLY won't be
| competitive even with efficiency improvements with
| wind/solar in 10-20 years when any plant actually leaves
| the boondoggle funding phase and goes online.
|
| Criticism 3: what design of plant? LWR/PWR/huge
| dome/solid fuel rod/oh shit it melts down in a natural
| disaster? Yeah uh, no thanks. If nuclear had gotten its
| act together about ... let's say 30-40 years ago and
| designed a reactor that:
|
| 1) meltdown proof
|
| 2) consumes almost all its fuel
|
| 3) scalable / easily replaced
|
| Then we might be able to do it. Problem is, the entire
| nuclear industry was invested in solid fuel rod designs,
| the military loved it for the weapons isotopes, the
| politicos blocked funding for LFTR and other designs, the
| solid fuel rod reprocessors were making bank, there was
| probably other shadow industries like waste
| handlers/transporters on the dole.
|
| So... nuclear is a no go. Solar/wind for now, use natural
| gas and existing nuclear for levelling until storage and
| solar/wind+storage drop to levels unattainable by
| nuclear/fusion/naturalgas/geothermal/hydro. Synthfuels
| for aviation. Long haul shipping can probably be done
| with swappable batteries and/or synthfuels. ... maybe...
| hydrogen if it's not the current trojan horse for
| hydrogen-from-methane being pushed by the oil companies.
|
| Maybe nuclear can be competitive when solar/wind even
| out, and battery/storage finishes its incredible scaling
| and tech development. Maybe.
|
| But the path forward is wind/solar, and maybe synthfuels
| and green hydrogen if the green isn't "green" like clean
| coal was "clean" coal.
|
| Our children should already curse us. The science was
| there, and my and ESPECIALLY the boomers picked SUVs, big
| houses, moving to florida, and lots of cheap crap shipped
| 5000 miles from overseas labor over dealing with
| problems.
| twawaaay wrote:
| First of all, you don't wake up in the morning and have
| an idea that it would be great to have 5 nuclear reactors
| so that you don't freeze overnight. We more or less know
| how much energy we will need in 10 years. You just need
| to plan ahead.
|
| Dams also need many years to build, but you won't say
| they are useless because of this...
|
| Second, nuclear _is_ price competitive with wind /solar.
| The way nuclear is competitive is because it allows
| removing dependency on fossil fuels and wind/solar do
| not. We can't afford using fossil fuels anymore because
| it does not matter if you get lower $/kWh if along we
| cause drastic climate changes.
|
| Stop thinking in terms of $/kWh produced by the
| powerplant alone. To compare cost of nuclear vs
| solar/wind you would need to include humongous batteries
| that would be needed to smooth out output of solar/wind
| stations which nuclear powerplants do not need. We don't
| have the technology to build those batteries in
| sufficient capacity and so the price of solar/wind is
| currently very, very high (the price of us all
| cooking/freezing/suffocating/starving, etc.)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Humongous batteries or humongous nuclear reactor?
|
| Which will be cheaper? Especially, what will be cheaper
| in 10 years?
|
| Which will be online faster? As in, can be scaled out in
| 3-5 years?
|
| With forthcoming 200 wh/kg LFP / LMFP, 140 wh/kg sodium
| ion, and various other schemes, I will heavily bet on
| batteries + solar / wind beating out nuclear. I don't
| know if you're engaging in FUD based on cobalt and nickel
| chemistries, or just are ignorant of the forthcoming
| Gotion/CATL production lines for high density LFP and
| sodium ion chemistries. Those aren't resource limited,
| they just need to build the factories, and factories are
| a lot better than nuclear power plants in timescale.
|
| PLUS, storage + solar can be distributed to the home to
| reduce the amount the grid needs to move from a
| centralized generator, make the grid and homes much more
| resilient, and function as a backup battery store to grid
| storage.
|
| I never see hydro listed on LCOE charts. I'm going to
| assume it's at the scale of nuclear which is already not
| competitive. Hydro is actually the best grid storage if
| you have a mountain and two big lakes or some similar
| setup. As I understand it, the efficiency is 90% pumping
| and then getting it back.
| LunaSea wrote:
| But climate change hasn't been a priority in most western
| countries (in most countries really).
| devonkim wrote:
| Cheap, sustainable power is in the interest of most
| governments that haven't been essentially paid off to
| stay on fossil fuels. But because the existing tech is
| more invested in various political campaigns and parties
| across most of the world they'll keep progress from
| happening in areas of public funding. From our left
| you'll get the anti-nuclear zealots and from the right
| you'll get the anti-government spending zealots, so it's
| pretty much a political loss until fairly recently with
| the EU designation of nuclear as an option to support
| nuclear of any sort. While climate change is serious and
| matters it bothers me deeply when I see older nuclear
| facilities shutdown while new coal power plants show up
| the same year. It really seems like backwards progress in
| much of the US in our energy sector anywhere that hasn't
| had massive renewables investments.
| pshc wrote:
| Everyone around me seems to be fixated on gas prices and
| bigger vehicles. It's pure myopia.
| otikik wrote:
| Compare that to what we have invested in crypto globally and
| weep.
| Noughmad wrote:
| Compare it to what we have invested in killing each other,
| and despair.
| joe_name wrote:
| jupp0r wrote:
| There is a gigantic stable fusion reaction from which we just
| need to convert energy into electricity - our sun. Bring out the
| dyson sphere.
| eatonphil wrote:
| The article doesn't seem to mention why exactly but I'm guessing
| it's some combination of 1) visible climate change (extreme heat,
| wildfires, drought, etc.) so people want better energy sources
| and 2) the mayhem Russia started seeing as it is one of the
| bigger energy providers.
|
| Or has there been anything else?
| oconnor663 wrote:
| Those things might explain some rising investment in
| alternative energy in general, but I don't think either them
| would be specific to fusion.
| scaramanga wrote:
| A much more reasonable first guess would be "the desire to
| increase the next-quarter earnings of industries which make
| political contributions." Which is the main driving force of
| all public investment. If politicians can take advantage of
| climate chaos and put it down as part of their "climate
| bullshit, whatever" policies then they can get a larger pay
| day, so why not?
|
| Here in Korea for example, they are building out the worlds
| most dangerous fission reactors because domestic heavy
| industry, concrete companies, and so on are extracting very
| good earnings from that. Meanwhile, Korea is the leader in
| offshore wind (but only to export to other countries, and it's
| all manufactured in Thailand) presumably the lack of interest
| in the Korean government in stimulating domestic demand, and
| the cheap labour in Thailand are factors, along with oil
| prices, in why it is so cost-effective.
|
| A belief in the free market would lead us to expect that
| eventually the green options would become just as corrupt and
| be able to hold the world hostage and capture policymakers, but
| it does not seem to have happened yet, maybe there is just a
| lead time for industries to develop their capacities for
| political corruption?
| V__ wrote:
| There seems to be a lot of innovative ideas and a lot of them
| seem to be quite doable, which is interesting for investors.
| One I really like is FirstLightFusion [1]. They are using a
| ballistic system to shoot at a small fuel cube, which creates a
| fusion reaction and then use the generated heat to power a
| turbine. There is a nice behind the scene video with some
| interview from FullyCharged [2].
|
| [1] https://firstlightfusion.com/ [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1RsHQCMRTw
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Inertial confinement fusion is orders of magnitude less
| likely to ever be economically viable than magnetic
| confinement. The targets (and projectiles in this case) will
| require such high precision to be able to achieve fusion in
| the moment of impact that it is virtually impossible to
| imagine this could ever be done economically.
|
| Further, you will need huge quantities of such targets and
| projectiles, as the power plant will have to destroy them at
| a rate of one per second or so, in constant operation. So
| even for a single day, you will require 86,400 targets and as
| many projectiles - each being a marvel of precision
| engineering. Also, there is a good chance that you wouldnt
| even be able to recycle the material from spent targets to
| make new ones, as they will become radioactive from being in
| contact with the fusing plasma.
|
| Essentially an ICF plant would actually be running on the
| world's most expensive fuel, and consuming it at an
| extraordinary rate.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| The taste of immense profit is in the air. In the minds of
| potential investors, fusion is no longer a "lol maybe in 50
| years" technology. Advances in magnetic modeling and magnet
| technology have resulted in cheaper, easier-to-develop
| alternatives to the classic Tokamak. Timelines are now
| believably "this decade" for demonstration reactors.
|
| Energy production/harvesting is a foundational element of our
| civilization. Literally all of the comforts of modern society
| require the expenditure of some form of energy. Any entity that
| develops an unlimited, clean and cheap source of energy
| essentially has access to a money printer.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Any entity that develops an unlimited, clean and cheap
| source of energy essentially has access to a money printer.
|
| Well, one thing that should be clear to anyone watching the
| space is that fusion will be neither unlimited, clean nor
| cheap. At the very least, not with any approach being looked
| at today.
|
| First of all, being based on state-of-the-art science and
| tech, it's clear that it cannot be cheap for another 20-30
| years even if it was working today.
|
| Secondly, fusion reactors will produce large quantities of
| radioactive waste, probably larger than fission reactors,
| because everything that comes in close proximity to the
| reactor will be bombarded by 30+ times as many neutrons than
| in a fission reactor (or 5x-20x as many for DD fusion), and
| much higher energy neutrons at that, making it brittle and
| radioactive. Most of the reactor components are expected to
| need changing every 2-4 years, by which time they will be
| radioactive waste. Not to mention, fusion plants will work
| with large amounts of tritium, which is notoriously hard to
| contain, making tritium leaks all but guaranteed. So,
| definitely not clean.
|
| Thirdly, fusion reactors require large amounts of tritium,
| which is virtually non-existent on Earth and must be created
| in fission power plants. The neutrons from the fusion
| reaction can theoretically also be used to recycle tritium
| (when hitting the lithium blanket), but you would have to
| recapture 100% of the tritium produced this way to recreate
| fuel, which is not possible. So, to run a fusion reactor you
| will be limited by tritium availability, and that will mean
| you also need a small fission reactor, and that in turn
| requires uranium - so, not really that unlimited.
|
| Not to mention, even Deuterium is not actually that easy to
| obtain, as you need to either get it from fossil fuels (the
| way it is mostly obtained today) or from water hydrolysis,
| which is another waste of your produced energy.
|
| Overall, fusion seems extremely unlikely to be an
| economically viable source of energy in the coming decades.
| Every new reactor will require massive investments, it will
| waste a good portion of its output to keep itself running
| (powering the superconducting magnets, pumping coolant, void
| pumping the reactors, water hydrolisis, lithium processing to
| extract the tritium etc). It will require highly trained
| engineers to design, build and maintain. It will have a high
| risk of catastrophic damage to the reactor itself, easily
| vaporizing much of the investment in an instant if the
| magnetic containment of the plasma fails, for example, or
| melting down spectacularly if the cooling system fails.
| Virtually all components of the reactor, including the high
| tech magnets, will require constant replacement as they
| become brittle from the neutron bombardment - and all the old
| parts will require expensive radioactive storage for at least
| a few decades to centuries.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Not to mention, even Deuterium is not actually that easy
| to obtain, as you need to either get it from fossil fuels
| (the way it is mostly obtained today) or from water
| hydrolysis, which is another waste of your produced energy.
|
| This is really not an honest critique. The cost of
| obtaining deuterium is quite low compared to all the other
| costs of building and operating a fusion reactor.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| If nuclear fusion were ever developed, I imagine the
| government would seek to seize its patent protection under
| the Invention Secrecy Act.
| scaramanga wrote:
| The first part, the taste of immense profit, sure. But the
| idea that people are thinking of profits on the timescale of
| "this decade" is almost laughable, given the situation we are
| already in with climate change.
|
| A much more rational explanation would be "they are trying to
| grab as much cash as they can right now, for as long as
| people believe that this is a thing that we should be doing,
| and may be possible", regardless of whether it's a good idea
| (it isn't), or whether it would work (doesn't look like it).
| But sure, maybe they are completely sincere and really
| believe in it all, who knows?
|
| But the issue isn't just that "all of the comforts of modern
| society require the expenditure of some form of energy" it's
| also the case that "exponentially increasing energy
| expenditure is just accelerating the rate at which we are
| asset stripping and polluting the earth" and the latter
| continues to be true even if we stop emitting CO2.
|
| I think it should now be apparent to all that comfort-seeking
| and suicide are essentially the same process (ask any
| addict), at least for the definitions of "comfort" that our
| current political and economic system are organised around.
| Of course, quite a lot of people still do not experience a
| lot of "comfort" even with the practically limitless energy
| that we have from fossil fuels.
|
| Edit: sorry for the ramble, but to summarize, I think you
| give people too much credit to imagine they can design such a
| complex money printer with a 10 year plan, and if they could
| plan to that timescale, they are probably going to see that
| society so far in to collapse by then, that even with
| infinite energy, there will not be much value in the money
| that it prints.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > In the minds of potential investors, fusion is no longer a
| "lol maybe in 50 years" technology.
|
| No. Potential investors are used to extremely skewed
| investments results for startups. Most startups fail, but
| some of those that succeed, succeed spectacularly.
|
| A successful fusion startup is almost guaranteed to have a
| spectacular success, something that would make Facebook or
| Uber or Tesla look like small potatoes. Given that, a VC is
| ok with investing in it even if they think the likelihood of
| success is only 1%. They would not if they think that
| likelihood is only 0.01%, because at that level estimates are
| not reliable (who's to say it's 0.01% and not 0.00001% ?).
| But if there's a reasonable argument that P(success) ~ 1%,
| then it's a no-brainer to invest, because even a mistake of 2
| orders of magnitude would still result in a positive return.
|
| For the rest of us though, the "fusion is 50 years in the
| future" can simply be replaced with "there's a 99% chance
| fusion will not be done in the next 50 years". Or, what the
| heck, just leave it at "fusion is 50 years in the future" and
| you'll be much more right than wrong.
| rapsey wrote:
| The cost effectiveness of fusion is completely up in the
| air. People speak about fusion as if it somehow is just
| going to produce infinite power at no cost.
| bawolff wrote:
| Better high temp super conductor lowering barrier to entry
| maybe? (im pretty ignorant of this field)
| ISL wrote:
| The really big deal in the last decade has been better magnets
| -- many of the "novel" approaches attracting recent funding are
| probably doomed to fail, but the MIT-associated consortia that
| simply aspire to building better tokamaks with modern magnets
| look encouraging.
| Filligree wrote:
| Some breakthroughs in plasma modelling, too.
| https://www.sciencealert.com/physics-breakthrough-as-ai-succ...
| drtgh wrote:
| Interesting. By that link, it seems they was able to
| stabilizing 'droplets' where two plasmas co-existed
| simultaneously inside Tokamak.
|
| I wonder if they thought if it would be possible to
| accelerate such plasma droplets in opposite directions for to
| take Helion's aproach [1] if needed.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29119180
| ianburrell wrote:
| REBCO high-temperature superconductors have potentially changed
| the game. They can support stronger fields which means smaller
| devices for same confinement. Commercial production seems to
| only started in the last decade.
|
| MIT's research, spun out as CFS, may be prompting other
| startups.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Is there any fundamental limit we're hitting on magnetic
| fields or might we see another 10-100x increase in field
| strength in the future?
| willis936 wrote:
| It would be shocking if HTS manufacturing research did
| anything other than accelerate. If there are fundamental
| physical limits to run in to then they are very far away.
| This is deep in the engineering limited area. How much
| abuse from strain and radiation can your HTS handle? The
| better your answer at a cheaper cost, the smaller and more
| powerful of a machine you enable. Humans know how to make
| pretty strong steel, so the superstructure won't be a
| limiting factor for a while if ever. Making HTS tapes and
| divertors that can handle what we ask of them are the
| material challenges. There is room to be clever with
| physics to lessen the divertor problem.
| hobscoop wrote:
| Actually, I think the strength of modern steels _is_ a
| limiting factor for fusion magnets. Plasma "beta"s are
| only a few %, so for a few atmospheres of plasma pressure
| your magnetic cage needs to be like a pressure vessel
| that contains hundreds of atmospheres. And with large
| holes poked through it for access. If you look at CFS's
| magnet test from last summer, there's a huge amount of
| steel.
| jleahy wrote:
| Nobody knows, is the short and boring answer. We don't have
| a sufficiently detailed understanding of what drives
| critical field strength in these materials (otherwise we'd
| have room temperature superconductors or have ruled out
| their existence already).
| pfdietz wrote:
| 60% of the mass of the ARC reactor is the steel support
| structure to resist JxB forces. A magnetic field 10-100x
| higher would exert such strong forces (magnetic pressure
| scales as B^2) that no material could resist them. So:
| strength of materials.
| asdf123a wrote:
| missing 3) tons of public funding lead to recent advances that
| the private sector is ready to take over and profit.
|
| capitalism innovation as usual.
| peter303 wrote:
| MIT's SPARC figured out how to manufacture high temperature
| superconductor magnets. That shrinks the size of the magnets
| and power consumption.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Actual advances in fusion and related energy generation tech.
| For example, at least one startup, Helion, is developing a way
| to generate electricity directly from the fusion reaction and
| magnetic field, instead of indirectly by heating water into
| steam that then turns a turbine generator. The increased
| efficiency from that might enable it produce net electricity.
| And quite frankly, it's way past time that we advanced beyond
| converting energy -> heat -> motion -> electricity, and
| shortened that cycle to energy -> electricity.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Magnetohydrodynamic generators were invented for coal plants
| 70 years or so ago but turbines are more efficient.
| hobscoop wrote:
| I thought they were ultimately limited by problems of
| corrosion at the electrodes?
|
| Helion's scheme to turn fusion heat into pushing E&M fields
| back through their magnet to generate electricity is pretty
| different from a standard MHD generator.
| DennisP wrote:
| And it's only possible because the reactor produces a
| series of small explosions of alpha particles.
| jason0597 wrote:
| I am genuinely surprised that there is so much interest in the
| comments here and excitement about fusion energy powering the
| future. Yet I see surprisingly few numbers or physics being
| discussed. Kind of disappointed for a forum that is supposedly
| technically-minded and able to speak mathematics.
|
| There was this great MIT paper [1] published a while back that's
| still to be rebuked, talking about the serious technical
| challenges. Furthermore, there's Maury Markowitz's blogs that
| have been around for more than a decade showcasing why
| economically future can never work competitively on the grid [2].
|
| Fusion is great science, it may eventually return a net positive
| in energy, but it has so many problems that make it impossible to
| use commercially.
|
| [1]: http://orcutt.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/The-
| Trou...
|
| [2]: https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/why-fusion-
| wi...
| lven wrote:
| One morea article worth reading about the con-fusion
| https://lvenneri.com/blog/ConFusion
| sva_ wrote:
| Something I wondered about fusion is, where does all that 'excess
| energy' go?
|
| I mean don't understand me wrong, it is obvious that is a much
| better form of energy release than all the other forms of energy
| production we have; but let us consider we manage to gain energy
| from fusion, the electricity released still releases heat, so how
| does it dissipate, if we have near-infitite energy, and anyone
| can spend as much as they want?
| joak wrote:
| The total amount of waste heat is low. Thermal pollution is a
| local problem (rivers getting hot) but not a global issue.
| hobscoop wrote:
| It'll ultimately be dissipated by infrared radiation into
| space. Earth receives something like 173,000 terawatts of
| radiation from the sun; this is equal to the amount radiated
| out as infrared, except for the "radiative forcing" which is
| the amount by which the world is heating. Radiative forcing is
| currently something like 1000 TW. All of human civilization is
| powered by something like 20 TW. If we want to stop global
| heating we need to use a fraction of those 20 TW to "turn the
| ship" of size 1000 TW.
| MaxDPS wrote:
| I'd imagine the excess energy goes out into space.
|
| They key difference between nuclear and fossil fuels is the
| emissions each generates. Fossil fuels burn into greenhouse
| gasses which trap in heat. If we switch to nuclear, those
| greenhouse gasses won't accumulate as much.
| freeflight wrote:
| The near-perfect vacuum of space actually makes it quite bad
| at absorbing heat, that's why anything we put up there, like
| space stations and satellites need huge radiators to keep
| everything cool enough to actually operate.
|
| While thermal pollution in Earths atmosphere is a very real
| and relevant issue with energy generation and all kinds of
| other human activities; A whole bunch of French fission
| nuclear reactors are regularly shut/throttled down during
| summer heat waves due to lack of appropriate cooling.
|
| The combination of these factors sometimes makes me wonder if
| the game Oxygen Not Included is a crude simulation of what we
| are doing to this planet. There the biggest end-game problem
| is the asteroid colony overheating due to creating a whole
| bunch of extra heat inside of it from using up fossil fuels,
| yet lacking any good way to actually vent all these massive
| amounts of extra heat from the little biosphere.
| Matumio wrote:
| Oxygen Not Included is a good game, but it probably doesn't
| have a single mechanic that makes physical sense. For
| example, it allows you to destroy carbon dioxide
| (preservation of mass?) by turning water into polluted
| water. And polluted water emits oxygen.
|
| Back on earth, thermal radiation is sending massive amounts
| of heat into space. Additional heat we put into the
| atmosphere will not stay for long enough to matter,
| compared to certain gases that block thermal radiation.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Additional heat we put into the atmosphere will not
| stay for long enough to matter_
|
| I'm just not too sure about that; Fossil fuels took
| millions of years, and massive natural forces, to
| accumulate in their modern day form, very similar to
| uranium and other energy resources. That's a lot of
| energy that went into "making" them over a lot of time.
|
| But humanity is "unloading" all that energy, with all its
| effects including thermal radiation, into the atmosphere
| at extremely faster rates than it took to accumulate. And
| we've been doing it at a literally global and
| industrialized scales.
|
| We even recognize the problem of thermal pollution on a
| "micro" level when we throttle and shut down generators,
| reactors and industrial processes that threaten to
| overheat the natural water bodies they use for cooling.
|
| I see no reason why these issues can't accumulate and
| scale up to global levels.
|
| Disregarding that possibility, as if humans couldn't
| screw up the planet on such scales, are exactly what made
| us run head first into global warming trough CO2
| emissions and littering most of the planet with led and
| plastics.
| [deleted]
| googlryas wrote:
| We could build a bunch of space radiators. But really this
| isn't something we need to think about for a while...global
| energy consumption is less than 1/10,000th of the energy
| deposited in soil and water by the sun.
| orzig wrote:
| It is a valid question, but to put it in perspective, the sun
| bathes us in dramatically more kWh than we need to annually
| power the world every few minutes. So fusion would be a drop in
| the bucket at a global scale.
| adrian_b wrote:
| In the beginning, of course.
|
| Nevertheless, the heating of the Earth puts a limit on the
| total usable nuclear power on Earth, both fission and fusion,
| it cannot be "infinite", but it must remain forever a small
| fraction of the power of the incoming Solar radiation,
| otherwise it would cause an excessive heating of the Earth by
| itself.
| willis936 wrote:
| Ever getting close to this point is what is considered a
| "good problem". We are always teetering on the edge of
| oblivion. Being so wildly successful that our industrial
| heat rivals that of the incident energy of the sun would be
| incredible. No problems humans have ever faced would be in
| living memory (including mortality). This is a science
| fiction future that does not need planning from the minds
| of today. It would also have many solutions related to
| adjusting albedo.
| alex_young wrote:
| Why don't we just leave the fusion where it works best, i.e. the
| sun?
|
| Put the same amount of spending into building a robotic solar
| collection factory on the moon and beam the power where we need
| it. No crazy particles to deal with and zero nuclear weapons
| byproducts.
| jefftk wrote:
| A beam of power many times stronger than the Sun sounds like a
| pretty terrifying weapon
| topher515 wrote:
| This is actually one of the classic "disasters" in Sim City
| 2000[1]. The "Microwave Powerplant" works by bouncing a
| concentrated beam of sunlight to earth. It provides
| plentiful, pollution free power... The only downside is
| sometimes the satellite beam misses, melting everything
| surrounding it.
|
| [1] https://simcity.fandom.com/wiki/Microwave_(disaster)
| alex_young wrote:
| The microwave beam would be pretty wide by the time it
| reached the surface. The power levels wouldn't make an
| effective weapon but would take up a sizable footprint for
| the collectors.
| jefftk wrote:
| If it isn't many times stronger than sunlight, just build
| more solar panels.
|
| If it is many times stronger than sunlight, that's pretty
| dangerous!
| alex_young wrote:
| MW power transmission is about 85% efficient at the
| receiving end. Solar is much lower than that.
| eropple wrote:
| Solar is much lower than that, but it has the advantage
| of being doable on the ground.
| greenthrow wrote:
| I don't believe the hype. From what I can see fusion still isn't
| anywhere near being a viable source of energy, other than in the
| form or solar power.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| Yes, it will be for the second half of this century, if we make
| it there.
|
| Side comment: fusion can be seen as a solution to many of our
| worst problems. But another way to see it is that without a
| complete change in what societies value and how they act (i.e.
| a cultural/philosophical/storytelling change), fusion is just
| going to increase the rate at which we are transforming this
| planet into a giant pile of garbage, whether its solid and
| liquid garbage (leading to wiping out 60% of wildlife in 50
| years, spilling the phosphorus of our soils into the sea
| -making them sterile and killing life in the sea- etc etc), or
| gas garbage (typically greenhouse gases).
|
| We do that by extracting resources nature concentrated for us
| for free for millions of years and dispersing them all around
| in our buildings, phones, playstations, fertilizers, fuel etc.
|
| As long as Black Friday is the highlight of the year, there are
| reasons to think fusion might be more dangerous than helpful.
|
| It's good to have an increasing ability to transform matter, as
| long as you are using that ability in the right direction.
| ambrozk wrote:
| I don't know what makes you so so confident about your
| prediction, and what you've written about fusion's
| relationship to waste is, I'm pretty sure, inaccurate.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| When you observe historical data, you see that the graphs
| of the amount of energy we are able to master are roughly
| proportional to the graphs of our emissions of garbage
| (construction, pollution, CO2, consumer goods etc.).
|
| I'm not saying I don't want fusion, I'm saying that without
| getting much better at deciding collectively what to do
| with it then those graphs will stay coupled, taking us to a
| sure doom.
|
| Anyway it's likely we'll get there before fusion so it
| should not distract us from all other necessary
| transformations the system needs.
| fzzzy wrote:
| I think the point is the more useful energy we have at our
| disposal, the more garbage we can make easily.
| Nition wrote:
| Great point that I hadn't considered before. Like how adding
| more lanes to a road just creates more traffic. I hope things
| don't go that way but I can see it happening.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Sigh, this again.
|
| Induced demand is still valid economic demand, and
| congested roads are still being used productively. There's
| a reason why sane governments don't regularly "improve"
| roads by removing lanes.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| If the actual costs are internalized (as in, not
| externalized) I don't think much of this economic demand
| is sustainable.
|
| Economic demand is just a metric.
|
| You are celebrating a metric without considering if and
| how it contributes positively to the goal, and I'm not
| even sure we agree on the goal, if yours is tumor-like
| growth.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| The point I was making was precisely regarding what is
| considered "valid" demand. Here, the fact that you
| appended "economic" after it strongly suggests to me that
| we don't have the same definition of it.
|
| One of the underlying assumptions of all mainstream
| economic theories since the XIXe century is that
| EVERYTHING that comes from nature is infinite and has
| been provided to us for free, whether it's resources,
| clean air, a durably nice temperature, animals etc. What
| has a cost is to pay people and machines to extract those
| things, but not the things in the first place.
|
| Based on this assumption, we've acted as if nature was
| infinite and increased our rate of extraction to
| ridiculous heights, reaching the limits of a system that
| is sadly, due to the laws of physics, finite. One example
| : China has used in 3 years roughly as much sand for
| construction as the US has in the entire XXth century
| (btw sand is the new gold and a huge black market for it
| is now in place...)
| barneygale wrote:
| Sane governments regularly pedestrianise roads and city
| centres, at least in Europe.
| Nition wrote:
| Whether or not that demand is economically valid doesn't
| really affect the point that demand will increase with
| more power from fusion, or more lanes for roads though
| does it? The economy has always been somewhat at odds
| with the environment.
| notatoad wrote:
| valid economic demand does not equal "good".
|
| increasing demand on a highway gets more people to where
| they are going, but if the destination doesn't have more
| parking spots, you've caused an imbalance in the system.
| same as the electrical generation - if it suddenly
| becomes absurdly cheap to manufacture more consumer
| goods, we've just increased the pressure on the whole
| system that needs to manage the rest of the lifecycle of
| those goods after manufacture. sure, some people will
| make money, but that's not the point.
| idlehand wrote:
| Governments sometimes demolish highways though. And a lot
| of the time, the marginal utility of adding another lane
| to a road is lower than the utility of using that space
| and public money somewhere else. If we scale a car-
| centric city to a million inhabitants we often end up
| with a majority of urban space devoted to roads and
| parking lots, which cost public money, instead of
| commercial and residential buildings which generate
| opportunities for the inhabitants and money for the
| municipality.
|
| Another problem of car-centric infrastructure is that it
| doesn't scale as well as public transport - a single bus
| can, potentially, take 50 or more cars off the road.
| serf wrote:
| > Sigh, this again.
|
| has this kind of initial dismissal ever won anyone any
| favor in an argument?
|
| I see it all over the thread, and I find myself having a
| hard time wanting to consider the argument afterwards
| even if I am personally aligned with them just because it
| seems so inconsiderate and rude.
|
| Is it supposed to signal your experience in the field,
| having heard this argument so many times -- or does it
| signal the opponents inexperience? Either way I find that
| approach to come off as arrogant and rude.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Agreed, it was a low-effort rebuttal to a low-effort
| post, and I feel bad for contributing to the noise floor
| on here by taking the bait.
|
| The admins make it clear that neither behavior is wanted,
| but the argument in question _really_ gets my goat. In my
| area, road diets and similar ways to deny demand for
| increased capacity aren 't just fallacious arguments, but
| key elements of public policy that are seemingly
| engineered to waste time and fuel while contributing to
| pollution. The only time such arguments are valid are
| when they've already been applied farther downstream,
| where the next bottleneck is inevitably cited as a reason
| why expanding capacity in a given area "won't work."
|
| Similar policies could be applied in many other places,
| yielding outcomes that pretty much everyone would agree
| are worse than the status quo, yet for some reason they
| always find a receptive audience when the problem domain
| is transportation.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Induced demand is still valid economic demand
|
| That does not justify it.
| acchow wrote:
| > Induced demand is still valid economic demand, and
| congested roads are still being used productively.
| There's a reason why sane governments don't regularly
| "improve" roads by removing lanes.
|
| I guess that depends on your perspective. I see expanding
| freeways as enabling further sub-urban growth, which is
| fundamentally unsustainable (from an energy, logistics,
| and municipal funding perspective).
| idlehand wrote:
| Commercial fusion power probably makes it more economical to
| spend more energy recycling materials.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| Yes, that would be a good use for it. But:
|
| - Designing things to be durable and recyclable in the
| first place is probably more economical and sustainable
| (both can be combined though, no problem)
|
| - Recycling is not a silver bullet. Extracting and re-
| combining all the microscopic parts of different metals in
| an iPhone to get back the original metal is incredibly
| expensive or unfeasible, compared to just extracting that
| metal from nature
|
| - Unlimited energy makes it easier to go deeper and deeper
| extract resources from earth's crust, generating more and
| more garbage. What do you think we'll do, when you observe
| what we've done so far?
| goodpoint wrote:
| And 100x more economical producing more and more new stuff.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > fusion is just going to increase the rate at which we are
| transforming this planet into a giant pile of garbage
|
| That rate does not scale negatively with energy prices. It
| scales positively with population, in the West.
|
| We could just accelerate towards stagnant global population
| growth. Improving economies and access to contraceptives in
| poor nations could do that. Everybody wins, except the very
| richest.
|
| Coercing the population to stop consuming is a non-starter.
| We could also create stronger incentives and regulations
| surrounding waste. There are lots of new biodegradable tech
| companies now, to replace plastics, for instance.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| > That rate does not scale negatively with energy prices.
| It scales positively with population, in the West.
|
| I wouldn't uses "prices" here as a framing. If you plot the
| graphs of worldwide energy usage and worldwide garbage
| emissions (let's take greenhouse gases or amount of
| artificialized soil as examples), you will see that they
| are correlated. We have grown to this gigantic population
| solely thanks to our mastery of energy, that's the one
| factor that enabled all the rest (abundant food, time to go
| to college instead of farming, developments in medicine to
| make your life longer, retirements, consumerism etc.).
|
| What I'm saying is that, looking at what we've done so far
| with energy, it's not entirely sure more energy will be
| good for our prospects of survival. We need to have a
| collective philosophical revolution first.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > If you plot the graphs of worldwide energy usage and
| worldwide garbage emissions (let's take greenhouse gases
| or amount of artificialized soil as examples), you will
| see that they are correlated.
|
| You've mentioned this twice, and so it's worth nothing
| that important factors also correlated in that period of
| time: the rapid rise of the middle class following the
| decimation of wealth from the world wars, which led to a
| population boom.
|
| Another factor you're taking for granted: fertility rate
| drops in economies as they get very strong. Western
| countries boost immigration for this reason: you need
| more bodies to increase GDP growth (and by extension,
| waste), if that's what you want. Lower energy prices
| alone will not lead to people breeding more. If it did,
| we'd have more kids than our grandparents/great-
| grandparents did, just as you alluded that they spent
| more on food.
|
| So on top of the fact that we're projecting GLOBAL
| STAGNANT POPULATION GROWTH, which means an end to
| increase in consumption, technological innovation means
| that consumption produces less waste. You can't account
| for innovation in energy and nowhere else.
|
| > What I'm saying is that, looking at what we've done so
| far with energy, it's not entirely sure more energy will
| be good for our prospects of survival. We need to have a
| collective philosophical revolution first.
|
| I know what you were saying, and I'm saying it's wrong.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| This is super interesting, let's continue the
| conversation: population increase is a big factor driving
| energy consumption (and garbage emissions) indeed. Let's
| assume we have GLOBAL STAGNANT POPULATION GROWTH from
| today on. So we stay at 7 billion, no problem (this is of
| course wrong, nicest estimates say we'll stabilise around
| 9 billion).
|
| The 2 questions now are: 1) what allowed us to reach this
| amount of population? 2) can this amount of population
| remain stable with the current inputs given to the system
| or not?
|
| My two answers:
|
| 1) Energy. Abundant energy is what allowed population to
| reach such heights (x7 in 200 years). In a nutshell it
| did so by enabling us to get abundant resources, food,
| medicine and comfort, the first stages of Maslow
| basically. It did so at scales that would have defied
| imagination in previous centuries.
|
| 2) There are two possible answers here:
|
| - Yes, it is sustainable, meaning we don't deplete
| earth's resources faster than they renew themselves,
| situation which will get better with the improvement of
| technology and will compensate for more and more people
| getting into the middle class (i.e. more consumers).
|
| - No, it is not sustainable, meaning we are depleting
| earth's resources faster than they renew themselves, and
| this situation will get worse with more and more people
| accessing the middle class (or worse: higher classes) and
| so the population will collapse at some point due to
| shortages of food/pandemics/wars etc.
|
| Data to help answer the questions:
|
| - all serious scientific reports (IPCC,
| https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-
| bound... and others) say that we are currently depleting
| earth's resources much faster than it can renew them and
| destabilising many natural systems like climate/life etc
| to irreversible points
|
| - the average american currently emits 16 tons of
| CO2/year, the average human emits 4 tons/year, we need to
| get to under 2 tons/year to make sure the climate does
| not blow up too much => consequence of this: 5 billion
| people with a lifestyle a bit closer to the one of
| americans (i.e. a growing middle class) is much worse
| than 10 billion with the living standard of people in
| say, south-east asia or Africa => the living standard is
| much more important as a factor than the amount of
| people, if we get more energy with the same amount of
| people, we'll just keep giving more and more comfort to
| more and more people, trust me that energy won't stay
| unused on the side nicely.
|
| - Similar idea to previous point: there is a direct
| correlation between living standard and amount of
| destruction of the environment. The rich destroy the
| planet incredibly more than normal people, even in
| developped country (symbolised extremely by Brandson &
| friends). More and more rich/middle class people = more
| and more energy consumption. This factor is much more
| powerful than population growth.
|
| - [To be fact checked] I don't remember exactly the
| numbers but in the past 50 years, optimisations thanks to
| technology have divided the consumption of machines by 2,
| while emissions have been multiplied by 4 or 5: so far
| with what we observe, technology is not a silver bullet
| to reduce the problem. It is more the cause of the
| problem by enabling us to do always more and more, with
| our clumsy, human ways and therefore disrupting nature
| always more and more.
|
| What are your answers?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Coercing the population to stop consuming is a non-
| starter.
|
| Right now we are doing the opposite of that though: the
| advertising industry, one of the largest in Earth, is
| mostly about brain-washing people into buying more stuff.
| We can easily put a stop to this tomorrow while listing
| nothing of value to society, but instead we fetishize
| growth so we don't.
| slothtrop wrote:
| You'd have to make a meaningful connection between growth
| and advertising, and you can't. The reason Western
| countries are increasing the immigration rate is
| precisely to perpetuate GDP, fertility rate is otherwise
| stagnant. This means people aren't individually
| increasing their rate of purchasing stuff over time, in
| fact many buy less than their parents did. Look around in
| your room and you'll probably see the average amount of
| "useless stuff" purchased by household. Are you drowning
| in it? Neither is anyone else.
|
| Innovation isn't just for the energy sector either.
| Consumables create less waste over time. Biodegradables
| are making a big entry in the market. All this means is
| that as the population levels out (as it is projected
| to), consumption will create less and less waste.
|
| At any rate this falls into the same category, coercion.
| People want things, especially if they improve their
| lives. Much of what you take for granted now was
| advertised. Take-out food, vehicles, smartphones and
| computers and media, etc.
|
| Yeah, "nothing of value". I don't think you get to decide
| what people value, that's what the market is for.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| Absolutely agree with tsimionescu
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Advertising's purpose is to distort the market.
|
| And yes, people are absolutely buying more garbage than
| their parents - and certainly their grandparents. Look at
| clothes, jewelry, furniture, home appliances, cars -
| those all used to be more or less lifetime purchases, and
| have become things people change every 5-7 years top
| (much less for clothes). Not to mention things like
| buying new phones and other electronics every year or
| two.
|
| These changes are all products of marketing and
| advertising to a great extent. Stopping these industries
| (or at least greatly curtailing their power) would help
| correct the market back into a more rational place.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > fusion is just going to increase the rate at which we are
| transforming this planet into a giant pile of garbage
|
| Thank you for saying this. Unlimited almost-free energy makes
| energy-saving measures moot, including building insulation.
| People would heat or cool even open spaces with little regard
| for the environment.
|
| And all the heat is eventually released into the atmosphere.
|
| Consumerism would be supercharged as well. Indeed we need a
| huge shift of societal priorities.
|
| (Needless to say, when I point that out HN downvoted me. Here
| technology is always and only good.)
|
| edit: there you go, already downvoted at -2 for saying the
| same thing as the parent.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Fusion will not produce "almost free" power.
| vlunkr wrote:
| So the problem fusion is that is will be too good?
| Interesting take.
| goodpoint wrote:
| No, it's not "too good".
| lambdaba wrote:
| So the fear is we'll use the extra energy to literally
| warm the planet? Seems like a scale mismatch. Climate
| "engineering" like blocking out the sun seems like a much
| more real danger
| slothtrop wrote:
| Not "warm", because with fusion filling this cache,
| energy usage wouldn't lead to CO2 pollution. They're
| suggesting it would lead to increases in consumption
| which means waste. Notwithstanding that a) life won't
| necessarily get more affordable for people, and stuff
| costs money, b) there are innovations now, and expected
| in the future, which would drastically curtail waste,
| though some regulatory measures might be necessary to do
| better with this.
|
| So I'm also skeptical.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I don't see why it goes without saying the extra energy
| would necessarily go towards consumerism. There is still
| a long way to go towards getting every human a decent
| life and opportunity to reach their full potential.
| There's no way we're getting there without the extra
| energy. For providing healthcare, nutricious food,
| education, etc.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| So far, extra energy has been entirely targeted at
| increasing consumerism: it's the famous "such and such
| country is finally getting a sizeable middle class".
|
| Translation of "middle class": class of mass consumers.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I guess my idea is most cultures have moved on or are in
| the process of moving on having realized that "things" is
| not what they need most, but that's a phase that a
| culture must pass through. Again, there are plenty of
| other things to do with that extra energy, it's not like
| we don't have a choice.
| felixmeziere wrote:
| Exactly we agree: the problem is doing the right choice!
| felixmeziere wrote:
| The graphs of energy availability/consumption and
| emissions of garbage are correlated. This is a historical
| fact.
|
| Life is literally as affordable for people as the amount
| of energy that is available to them, that's the main
| factor (a bit of optimization of processes also plays but
| at a more minor order). Food used to be 25% of
| households' spending early XXth century, when someone
| would go buy eggs from the local market or farmer. Today
| it is 10% if you count the margins of industrials,
| distributors etc. But if you just look at the price of
| the eggs, then it's probably less than 1%.
|
| What allowed this? Energy! Energy allowed for abundant
| food, a long life, studying and the general
| tertiarisation of the economy (giving birth to tech) and
| of course consumerism. The more energy the cheaper
| everything is the more people consume, at least as long
| as we persuade people that buying things is the greatest
| pleasure in life.
| slothtrop wrote:
| See my response to your other post.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Why people keep asking the same questions? felixmeziere
| wrote it very clearly in the parent post.
|
| The evidence clearly shows that humanity is not acting
| rationally and we are letting consumerism run unchecked.
|
| A good example is plastic: we are aware of the health
| impact of particulate and yet we can't even have a
| conversation around stopping using plastic worldwide.
| Rather than a choice it looks like an addiction.
|
| felixmeziere wrote about cultural change.
|
| Additionally, it's very likely that fusion will be viable
| primarily in developed countries, further increasing
| energy inequality.
| NewEntryHN wrote:
| > other than in the form or solar power
|
| and wind and hydro
| robotresearcher wrote:
| and fossil fuels, stored for a while.
| wetpaws wrote:
| So was solar and nuclear.
| [deleted]
| twarge wrote:
| Agree. There have been no breakthroughs. The projects getting
| funding are just different enough to be not immediately
| disprovable and continue to spectacularly overpromise without
| solving any of the real problems. Chamber embrittlement?
| Nuclear waste? (activation of the apparatus by the 12 MeV
| fusion netrons is a lot worse than the 100 keV fission
| neutron.)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _have been no breakthroughs_
|
| Magnet miniaturisation and CADs like the stellarator [1]
| refute this.
|
| With respect to waste and embrittlement, those are simpler
| consumables and waste products than fossil fuels and
| atmospheric emissions.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarator
| joak wrote:
| And what about Helion Energy tech? Pulsed collision of
| plasmoids (FRC), with direct energy conversion. Deuterium
| helium3 aneutronic fusion, no neutrons.
|
| They've received $500M (lead by Sam Altman) to demo net
| electricity by 2024.
| hobscoop wrote:
| Yes. We're currently living through a golden age of
| stellarator design powered by new algorithms and
| optimization techniques.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Some of the efforts you hear about actually are immediately
| disprovable.
| magila wrote:
| Where is this $1.9 billion over the last decade figure coming
| from? ITER alone has surely burned through more than double that.
|
| Edit: Sounds like it might only be counting investment in private
| companies.
| rjmunro wrote:
| > There was also a breakthrough in late 2021, when researchers at
| the Joint European Torus (JET) facility in Oxford managed to
| release a record-breaking 59 megajoules of fusion
|
| 59 megajoules in useful units is 16kWh, less than 2 days use of
| my house. That's the biggest fusion reaction ever.
| DeIonizedPlasma wrote:
| 59MJ over the short period of 7s, equivalent to 8.5 MW
| (https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3722). A research reactor (not
| built to be a power plant) that is still capable of powering
| over 20,000 households while running isn't really as
| underwhelming as you seem to imply it is.
| chris_va wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba ... was slightly
| larger than that.
|
| Anyway, 59MJ isn't terrible if you can run it at 60Hz. Of
| course, I agree that the reality is a bit far away.
| toveja wrote:
| 59 megajoules of sustained energy ^over the course of a few
| seconds^.
|
| Ideally this energy output would be sustained for days within
| ITER.
|
| JET is not designed to do this, as it has a copper magnet
| system, which means if you try to sustain such a plasma
| (confined with around 5 T magnet and around 2 MA plasma
| current) for longer than a few seconds, you would melt the
| magnet.
|
| Edit: ITER would operate at 5-10 T, and around 15-20 MA plasma
| current.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Note that these are 59MJ of energy released by the fusion
| reaction. No attempt was made to actually catch them. And
| even if they had been captured, they would not have been able
| to power the magnets + cooling systems used to confine the
| plasma. We are very very far away from actually producing
| even 1W of usable fusion power.
| toveja wrote:
| You are correct that at JET there is no tech installed to
| absorb the neutrons, nor will there ever be in JET, since
| (as pointed out above) it is a _research_ device.
|
| Current fusion devices are not nor were they ever designed
| to generate electricity for a grid.
|
| This is why we build ITER, and DEMO thereafter. Generating
| 'usable fusion power' is limited to building reactor scale
| experiments, which to date, has not been done (ITER will be
| the first).
| tsimionescu wrote:
| ITER is also not planning to capture the neutrons. It is
| only planned to produce more thermal energy than the
| total amount of electrical energy put in.
|
| DEMO will be plants built independently by several
| nations following the research from a successful ITER.
| They will be the first time that any attempt is made to
| actually convert the fusion products into electricity.
| There are currently no concrete plans for any DEMO plant
| - those are contingent upon ITER's success.
|
| If everything goes to plan, the first model DEMO plant
| would begin operation in 2051. So, as I said, we are a
| long way away from producing even 1W of usable electrical
| power from fusion.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| The first human flight lasted 12 seconds, don't judge
| achievements by the numbers.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Crazy to imagine what would've happened if in the past it had
| been more than sub-fusion never.
|
| http://i.imgur.com/sjH5r.jpg
|
| https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/04/11/0435231/mit-fus...
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| I've known about this chart for a long while, but recently I've
| become skeptical of it. What says that fusion would be a
| success even if that level of funding was reached? The most
| mature fusion reactor being built, ITER, is gigantic and it's
| not clear how it could be made cheaper or miniturized.
| DennisP wrote:
| Actually it's quite clear: use REBCO superconductors.
|
| Tokamak output scales with the square of reactor volume and
| the fourth power of magnetic field strength. Double the
| field, 16X the output.
|
| Modern REBCO superconductors can support much stronger
| magnetic fields than ITER will manage. That's why CFS is
| building a reactor using REBCO which is much smaller than
| ITER, but should have the same performance. It'll be half the
| size of JET, which was built in a year. They're planning a
| net power attempt in 2025 and a lot of independent fusion
| researchers think they'll succeed.
|
| CFS is a spinoff from MIT, whose Alcator C-Mod had more
| powerful magnets than any other tokamak in the world.
| Stevvo wrote:
| SPARC's 2025 timeline is a joke. They haven't even started
| hiring engineers yet, let alone building the thing because
| they still have no idea how to make a big enough REBCO
| magnet.
| DennisP wrote:
| They've already built a SPARC-size REBCO magnet, and
| demonstrated it at 20 Tesla for five hours.
|
| https://www.ans.org/news/article-3240/mit-ramps-10ton-
| magnet...
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-
| fusio...
|
| It's pretty amazing that they did that without any
| engineers.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That chart was about a proposed crash program for tokamaks.
| It was put together based on an optimistic (and disproved)
| idea about how tokamak physics would scale. Had that program
| actually been funded, it would have been a guaranteed
| failure.
| danaris wrote:
| That's part of the problem with fairly basic research like
| what we're putting into fusion. Without _making_ the
| investment, _doing_ the science and engineering to actually
| study these things and learn how they work and how we can do
| them better, we won 't _know_ how or whether they can be made
| cheaper, miniaturized, etc.
|
| This isn't the same kind of problem that most of us are used
| to dealing with in our daily lives--where the fundamental
| components, and the fundamental _science_ , that make it all
| up are well-understood and fairly mature, and what we have to
| do is come up with creative ways to apply it. This is the
| kind of "we don't know if any specific avenue of research
| will ever pay back a positive monetary ROI, but pursuing them
| is important anyway" science that we _need_ to be doing with
| or without fusion as a specific goal, because over time, it
| will produce years or decades of silence, punctuated by
| small, incremental improvements in our understanding of the
| universe...and then an amazing breakthrough like practical,
| commercially-viable fusion power.
|
| But only if we are willing to patiently fund it through those
| years or decades of boring stuff.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| But where are the fusion neutrons? (See Voodoo Fusion [1])
|
| [1] https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf
|
| I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and
| switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we don't
| just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors.
|
| Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be cheap
| (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so who
| cares), and c) not have the same stigma as fission is kind of
| weird in my mind.
|
| For example, there are leaks of tiny amounts of tritium at some
| fission plants and people lose their minds. Fusion reactors will
| have many orders of mag more tritium. Will people not lose their
| minds just the same? Tritium is notoriously hard to contain since
| it's so small. It can permeate through metal like a hot knife
| through butter.
|
| Also, lots of people worry about fission and nuclear weapons
| proliferation. So does fusion get around this? Not really. In
| fact it's worse. Did you know that the two materials you need to
| make thermonuclear weapons are tritium and plutonium? Tritium
| breeding is required by almost all practical fusion power plants
| (the other reactions are 100s to 1000s of times harder, I don't
| care what x random fusion CEO says, they're in it for the sweet
| billionaire side project money).
|
| Plutonium is made by irradiating natural uranium from the dirt
| with neutrons. Practical fusion reactors have lots of neutrons.
| Really high energy ones too.
|
| Anyway let's just do fission you guys. It's way easier. It has
| been working fine since the 1950s. It's zero carbon. Waste
| problem is solved (see Onkalo, and reprocessing). It net saves
| millions of lives by displacing air pollution. It runs 24/7 on a
| tiny land and material footprint. We have enough uranium and
| thorium to run the whole world for 4 billion (with a b) years
| using breeder reactors (demonstrated in 1952 in Idaho). Get the
| Koreans over here to build some ARP1400s or the Chinese to build
| some Hualong Ones until we figure out how to project manage again
| and then call it good.
| mlindner wrote:
| > Imagining that somehow fusion is going to a) work, b) be
| cheap (fuel cost is only 5% of total nuclear fission cost so
| who cares), and c) not have the same stigma as fission is kind
| of weird in my mind.
|
| The cost of fission comes doubly from the nuclear proliferation
| risk and the safety risk, neither of which apply at all to
| fusion. The levels of radioactive waste produced is at
| basically the same levels as medical practices.
|
| > Plutonium is made by irradiating natural uranium from the
| dirt with neutrons. Practical fusion reactors have lots of
| neutrons. Really high energy ones too.
|
| In that case you're intentionally trying to irradiate
| something, you can do the opposite and engineer for things to
| not be irradiated, and even then it tends to be long lived low
| radiation isotopes.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| No proliferation risk at all in a tritium fountain full of 14
| MeV neutrons? Are you sure you know what you're talking
| about?
|
| These will all be guarded with pseudo military guns guards
| and gates just like fission, and monitored by the IAEA.
|
| As for radiological safety, see point about tritium. And
| google tritium leak nuclear plant for good measure.
|
| Youre right that there is less radioactivity in fusion
| plants, but maybe not enough less to really matter.
| smaudet wrote:
| "Still, the NRC and industry consider the leaks a public
| relations problem, not a public health or accident threat,
| records and interviews show."
|
| https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2012/part-ii-ap-impact-
| tri....
|
| And this is why we should not trust any fission-bearing
| folk. Or apparently fusion-bearing folk either.
| mlindner wrote:
| Tritium leaks are indeed public relations problems, if
| done in the very small quantities that would be in a
| fusion reactor.
| mlindner wrote:
| > No proliferation risk at all in a tritium fountain full
| of 14 MeV neutrons? Are you sure you know what you're
| talking about?
|
| If you're putting hunks of uranium inside a fusion pressure
| vessel it'd be really obvious. Tritium itself doesn't have
| proliferation risk.
|
| > These will all be guarded with pseudo military guns
| guards and gates just like fission, and monitored by the
| IAEA.
|
| No they won't. Because even if you crash a truck into them
| there's no ecological disaster.
|
| > As for radiological safety, see point about tritium. And
| google tritium leak nuclear plant for good measure.
|
| The tritium stored in the reactor will be in the microgram
| range.
|
| > Youre right that there is less radioactivity in fusion
| plants, but maybe not enough less to really matter.
|
| It's several orders of magnitude less. I think that matters
| quite a bit.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is completely premature to claim that the
| radioactivity will be "several orders of magnitude less".
|
| The neutron flux produced by a fusion reactor will be
| much higher than in any fission reactor, and it must be
| absorbed in a shield, to produce heat, which will be the
| output of the fission reactor.
|
| Choosing an appropriate material for the shield will
| minimize the quantity of radioactive material that is
| created per unit of output energy, but it is pretty
| certain that the radioactivity will not be "several
| orders of magnitude less".
|
| The best that can be hoped is that it is possible to find
| a shield material that will produce only very small
| quantities of long-lived radioactive isotopes, so that,
| after a storage for not too many years, the radioactivity
| might decrease to be "several orders of magnitude less".
|
| Nevertheless this remains to be demonstrated.
|
| For example, any piece of steel present near a fusion
| reactor would produce copious amounts of cobalt 60, but
| that would decay to negligible radioactivity after a few
| hundreds years.
|
| Moreover, to ensure the predicted low residual
| radioactivity, any shield material needs to be free of
| impurities, which even in very small quantities could
| produce dangerous radioactive isotopes.
|
| The requirements for advanced purification will greatly
| increase the cost of the structural materials for fusion
| reactors. However this is not a new problem. Similar
| requirements are imposed on the structural materials for
| fission reactors, but the fusion reactors will not be any
| better from this point of view.
| pfdietz wrote:
| DT fusion reactors can produce much less radioactivity,
| particularly long lived radioactivity, than fission
| reactors, but there are some caveats.
|
| First, the radioactivity is spread through a much larger
| volume of material. The cost of dealing with it will have
| a component related to the volume rather than the total
| radioactivity. It's not clear that dealing with fusion's
| waste problem will be cheaper than dealing with
| fission's.
|
| Second, getting low induced radioactivity, and
| particularly low production of radioisotopes with long
| half lives, may require expensively low concentrations of
| impurities in the reactor materials. For example, the
| RAFM steel Eurofer 97, a top candidate for a DT reactor
| construction, contains a small amount of nitrogen. Even
| this trace caused problems from 14C production pushing
| the steel over a regulatory limit requiring the steel to
| be disposed of more expensively due to that 14C content.
|
| (I also have seen a claim from Abdou that the Eurofer 97
| for DEMO would cost $3B, just for the raw steel. I'm not
| clear where this estimate comes from but it could be due
| to the need to expensively purify the steel of impurities
| to avoid their activation.)
| ncmncm wrote:
| A thousand tons of molten radioactive lithium, exposed to
| air, would make a pretty satisfying boom.
|
| The tritium being bred in the lithium had better amount
| to more than micrograms, because that will be fuel.
| Separating the day's few grams of tritium from the
| thousand tons of molten radioactive lithium coursing
| through miles of pipe is an exercise not yet tackled by
| fusion promoters.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > I started out in fusion and switched to advanced fission.
|
| You are in good company. Lawrence Lidsky, the fusion guy at MIT
| who wrote the famous article "The Trouble with Fusion" back in
| the 1980s, also switched to advanced fission reactors. His
| critique of DT fusion is still worth reading. The big issue,
| the lousy volumetric power density of DT fusion reactors
| compared to fission reactors, is still a huge albatross around
| the necks of all these private DT efforts.
| mlindner wrote:
| > His critique of DT fusion is still worth reading. The big
| issue, the lousy volumetric power density of DT fusion
| reactors compared to fission reactors, is still a huge
| albatross around the necks of all these private DT efforts.
|
| That was largely a product of the times, before high magnetic
| fields could be achieved. ITER has all those problems, but
| newer ideas do not.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Your comment just shows you don't understand what he wrote.
| His critique is affected not at all by the existence of
| higher magnetic fields.
|
| ITER's volumetric power density is 400x worse than a PWR.
| ARC's is just 40x worse. Lidsky was pointing out DT fusion
| reactors are always going to be (generously) 10x lower in
| volumetric power density than fission reactors, due to
| limits on handling the power flowing through the first
| wall. Higher magnetic fields let ARC be better than ITER,
| but still sucking relative to fission reactors.
| joak wrote:
| And what about non-DT fusion?
|
| Helion, funded by Sam Altman, is doing DD/DHe3 fusion. Non-
| thermal fusion with direct energy conversion. They are
| attempting net electricity for 2024.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's why I was careful to write "DT". :)
|
| If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to invest in
| a fusion effort, it would be Helion.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Considering how much less likely the non-DT reactions are
| than DT ones from a nuclear physics perspective at
| reasonable plasma temperature, I'd say it's an extra long
| shot. We'd expect the easy reactions to be done first,
| followed by the much harder ones.
|
| Every advanced anything company says net electricity by
| 2024. I'm not holding my breath.
|
| I'd be thrilled to be wrong.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If the physics issues were the only ones facing fusion,
| you'd be making a good argument there.
|
| But after the physics comes engineering. Helion's
| approach is to be more aggressive on the physics in order
| to greatly ease the grave engineering issues that face DT
| reactors. I consider these latter issues to be so serious
| that, overall, I rate Helion as less of a long shot at
| achieving practical fusion than any of the DT schemes.
| smaudet wrote:
| Not sure why you're being down-voted, easy solutions with
| numerous problems are generally inferior to more elegant
| solutions with fewer problems, could you enumerate what
| these issues are between Helion and DT reactors?
| pfdietz wrote:
| The problems with DT are low power density due to limits
| on power/area through the first wall, neutron damage to
| reactor materials, getting tritium breeding to work, and
| the need for a large non-nuclear part of the plant
| (turbine, generator).
|
| Helion potentially avoids or ameliorates all of these
| problems. Unlike with DT, where 80% of the power is in
| neutrons, a smaller fraction of power is from neutrons
| here (particularly when there's enough 3He available to
| be using that too.) The neutrons from DD fusion are much
| lower energy than from DT fusion, so they produce much
| less helium in the reactor materials (helium produced
| there migrates to tiny bubbles where the pressure grows
| until it rips the material apart.) With Helion, reactor
| materials have a reasonable shot at lasting the lifetime
| of the reactor; this is not true for first wall materials
| in a DT reactor operating at adequate power density.
|
| Helion's scheme also directly recovers plasma energy,
| including fusion energy going to ions, as electrical
| energy, so it can substantially, perhaps completely,
| avoid the need for turbines and generators.
|
| Helion does not need to breed tritium. All it has to do
| is capture and store produced tritium from DD reactions
| (so it can decay to 3He, which would be used), which will
| be much easier. There is no need for a breeding blanket
| with lithium, although one could be added if desired. If
| so, that breeding blanket doesn't have to allow rapid
| recovery of produced tritium before it decays.
| joak wrote:
| Also in Helion machine magnets coils are in aluminum. And
| because aluminum is (mostly) transparent to neutrons they
| don't get damaged. This is to be compared with the
| superconductors of tokamaks.
|
| So actually their idea is to put the shield (or the
| blanket) outside of the reactor, not between the magnets
| and the plasma. A lot easier to do.
|
| There are still many uncertainties, some because they are
| secretive and others because they have to figure out a
| solution.
|
| They seem pretty confident to reach net electricity in
| 2024, they might be completely wrong on something and/or
| underestimating the difficulties. We'll see.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I'm not sure about that aluminum argument. Aluminum isn't
| transparent to neutrons; neutrons will scatter off Al
| nuclei just fine. Perhaps the metal is more resilient to
| the resulting damage.
|
| The real thing to worry about in neutron irradiation of
| coils is damage to insulators, not to conductors.
| Insulators are very sensitive to radiation damage.
| dignick wrote:
| There are several problems with fission (probably fusion too)
| as I understand it:
|
| 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and
| falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to
| subsidise this to make it viable.
|
| 2. Construction time - average is 10 years, we don't have that
| long to wait.
|
| 3. Decommissioning is expensive and a long way in the future.
| Is that cost built into the cost per MW? How can we be sure the
| money will be protected, and will be enough to cover it?
|
| 4. Spent fuel. The project you mentioned isn't complete yet,
| but even then it's a huge liability to leave for future
| generations to manage indefinitely.
|
| Meanwhile, renewables don't have these problems and are
| available immediately. We should be building huge factories to
| produce wind and solar en masse.
|
| Source for the figures: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
| energy-nuclearpower-idUSK...
| troorl wrote:
| > Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and
| falling).
|
| Do you count in all the subsidies the renewables get from
| governments, including the production of the solar
| panels/wind mills, land ownership, utilities and all kinds of
| tax cuts and preferential treatment? In my country
| billionaires own massive solar farms and make tons of money
| at the expense of everyone else.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Oil has way more subsidies than renewables. By far
|
| I'm rooting for billionaires to own more and more solar
| farms please. Let them buy more newspapers and "think-
| tanks"
|
| Because I'd really like to live on that world where oil has
| no subsidies, occupies no land and it gets magically
| transported throught the country
| legulere wrote:
| Generally speaking the costs in those comparisons are
| usually without subsidies. However some subsidies are
| difficult to disentangle from the costs. For instance it's
| difficult for nuclear power plants to get insurance, so
| often states take that responsibility.
|
| Can you tell where you are from?
| rmbyrro wrote:
| > Here in the UK the government is promising to subsidise
| this to make it viable.
|
| Doesn't make it cheaper, only hides the cost. Subsidies are
| many times perversive. Prices are communicating something.
| When Gov messes with it, people and organizations tend to
| make bad decisions for themselves, society, environment or
| everything.
| 7952 wrote:
| The UK government system is more nuanced than that. The
| operator bids for a strike price and communicate something
| with the bid they offer. That price is then locked in. We
| will never pay less than that, but we will never pay more
| either. In successive rounds the strike price is lower.
| They are setting the price up front to give stability. And
| that makes sense when most of the cost is upfront.
| Otherwise renewable prices would just track oil prices.
| bratbag wrote:
| Cost factor isn't as relevant as you think, as this is an
| apple's to oranges comparison.
|
| Renewables are too unreliable to act as baseline generation
| for a country.
|
| In the UK last year for example we had very little wind, so
| we had to ramp up our gas power output to make up for our
| shortages in renewables. We burned through much of our gas
| reserves before the Ukraine war started, because of Renewable
| power unreliability.
|
| Fission is the replacement for that baseline role that
| hydrocarbons currently fill, not the unpredictable-but-clean
| role that renewables fill.
|
| The ideal future has both, with renewables producing as much
| power as possible and fission running on low capacity and
| ready to ramp up when renewables fall short.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Just repeating the baseline myth does not make it true.
| Nuclear does not compete with gas it competes with coal and
| renewables. It is often technically difficult but more
| importantly economically prohibitive to run nuclear as on
| demand sources. So for both renewables and nuclear you need
| some sort of storage or peakers.
|
| Moreover nuclear is not the beacon of reliability, Frances
| nuclear plants were running to only 60% capacity due to
| maintanance and weather (when it gets hot nuclear plants
| have to shut down or reduce output significantly). Guess
| who was picking up the shortfall... German renewables and
| gas.
|
| Finally, cost is absolutely the main measure: if the cost
| of nuclear is 3x wind/solar (and the cost of solar is
| falling exponentially) and you want to replace fossil fuels
| as quickly as possible the obvious way is to build
| renewables, you can overbuild 300% at the same cost. At
| that point you're close to being able to run your grid if
| you are sufficiently geographically distributed (even
| without batteries). Moreover in 10 years when your nuclear
| plant is finished building the price differential is like
| >5x due to the cost decreases.
| toxik wrote:
| Calling it a myth doesn't make it a myth. Power companies
| have been saying exactly this for years: they need
| PLANNABLE power generation. Building 3x solar or wind
| plants means 3x volatility.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places
| radically reduces volatility.
|
| Wind is always blowing somewhere. Sun is always out
| somewhere. Storage is transportable.
| ascar wrote:
| > Building 3x renewables in widely distributed places
| radically reduces volatility.
|
| Is that actually true? Serious question. That sounds like
| a claim that seems so obvious, but won't hold up to the
| degree you might think in reality. Just one scenario I'm
| thinking of are giant storms that have clouds spanning
| multiple countries. And in that storm scenario even wind
| power shuts down to prevent damage.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Such giant storms are rare, and short-lived. A few days'
| storage outlasts them.
| ascar wrote:
| A few days of storage is a lot though isn't it?
| ncmncm wrote:
| How much NG do utilities stockpile?
|
| A few days' would be a lot of batteries, but you don't
| use batteries for that. A few days' pumped hydro, e.g.,
| is not much at all.
| cinntaile wrote:
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.12.318 has tried to
| analyze this for the EU. I'm not convinced that daily
| data provides the necessary granularity though, but more
| detailed data for the mentioned time span probably
| doesn't exist. I would try to find some more articles and
| check if there is a consensus.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It reduces volatility, it doesn't eliminate it. There
| will still be days when the sun and wind aren't out in a
| large enough fraction of places that there will be a
| shortage. It is less likely, but it will still happen.
| Factories can't just shut down, people can't just choose
| not to charge their cars or boil their kettles if there's
| a shortage.
| ncmncm wrote:
| When generation flags and local storage looks likely to
| be depleted, utilities will order a shipment of ammonia
| from any of numerous solar farms in the tropics.
|
| Most of the time a utility will prefer cheaper local
| generation, local storage, or transmission-line power
| before spending on shipped-in synthetic fuel.
| Galaxeblaffer wrote:
| Is storage really transportable ? Like how much energy in
| any form could you realistically transport for any
| meaningful distance without using too much of the energy
| that you are transporting ? Since you made the claim I'd
| like you to paint any kind of realistic scenario.
| _ph_ wrote:
| High voltage DC lines are quite practical over 1000
| kilometers and more - Germany already operates an 1.4GW
| line to Norway, using the Norwegian grid as a storage for
| electricity.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There will be a very great deal of ammonia synthesis,
| worldwide, just because ammonia is so useful for so many
| things, ultimately billions of tons annually. Ammonia is
| very transportable.
|
| Even liquified hydrogen is about as transportable as LNG,
| which is shipped all over.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Hydrocarbons, especially medium-chain liquid
| hydrocarbons, can easily and safely be transported 10_000
| kilometres and further.
|
| Doing exactly that is presently about a quarter of total
| global international trade by value.
|
| Their advantages of high energy density, safety, and
| undemanding environmental and handling requirements
| (distribution can be performed in temperatures from -40
| to +40 celsius by almost untrained teenagers), and
| effectively unlimited storage duration and volume, far
| outweigh the energy inefficiency of producing them from
| atmospheric carbon. Especially once PV gets cheap enough.
|
| Edit: I notice I didn't answer your question. For liquid
| hydrocarbons, I believe the answer is in the single digit
| percents, perhaps five percent. For LNG, the energy cost
| is much higher, perhaps as much as a third of the total
| energy value.
| ncmncm wrote:
| TFA is entirely about synthesizing transportable
| hydrocarbon energy storage.
|
| But making methane is inferior to making ammonia, because
| extracting the diffuse carbon you need from air takes up
| energy. It does not displace any more CO2 emission,
| because somebody will burn it and dump the CO2 back into
| the atmosphere again.
|
| So, the only reason to make hydrocarbons is for things
| like your chainsaw or A320 that are not worth replacing
| immediately.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > It is often technically difficult but more importantly
| economically prohibitive to run nuclear as on demand
| sources.
|
| I'd just like to point out that the US Navy has an
| excellent track record running nuclear reactors that ramp
| up to full and down to zero rapidly, in submarines.
|
| The US Navy does not have quite the same financial
| constraints as commercial land-based power, but
| constraints still exist.
|
| I fully agree that solar PV and wind, especially PV, are
| much more atttractive to investors because you can be
| earning cashflow from your first MW of capacity while
| you're installing the second (which takes weeks (or
| days!) instead of years), and you can iterate and scale
| this all the way to 10 TW or more of capacity, as the
| demand requires.
| ascar wrote:
| > So for both renewables and nuclear you need some sort
| of storage or peakers.
|
| One thing I don't understand here is the problem with
| overproduction. If we actually have excess electricity
| (as in not needed as electricity later) can't we
| dynamically use that for active carbon capturing? The
| efficiency of that process isn't even that important then
| as the main goal is to remove carbon from the atmosphere
| with carbon free energy.
|
| Having carbon free overproduction sounds like a good
| thing to me. It's the occasional underproduction that's
| hard to handle.
| tuatoru wrote:
| See Casey Handmer[1]. We are underproducing solar PV by
| at least 4.8 TW (nameplate) per year: we're only
| producing about 4% of what we need.
|
| There is no such thing as overproduction, there are only
| manufacturing bottlenecks in batteries, electrolyzers,
| and reverse osmosis water plants.
|
| 1. https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/were-
| going-to-...
| nixass wrote:
| > 2. Construction time - average is 10 years, we don't have
| that long to wait
|
| You've been saying that for last 20 years. It's pathetic by
| this point. Best time to start doing things (anything) was 30
| years ago. Second best time is now
| jamesrom wrote:
| > Construction time - average is 10 years, we don't have that
| long to wait.
|
| This is a fallacy in two ways:
|
| 1. Scaling up nuclear projects will decrease construction
| time and cost. Efficiencies are found by with scale.
|
| 2. The opportunity cost of not starting nuclear projects now
| will surely be worse than attempting 100% renewables. The
| point is that we can invest in both.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > > Construction time - average is 10 years, we don't have
| that long to wait.
|
| > This is a fallacy in two ways:
|
| > 1. Scaling up nuclear projects will decrease construction
| time and cost. Efficiencies are found by with scale.
|
| More than half of a nuclear plant is essentially the same
| as any large scale power plant (goal, gas...). The
| opportunity for reducing cost through economies of scales
| is low. Economies of scales work for things build in
| factories, much less so for construction projects. That is
| true in general, not just for power plants.
|
| > 2. The opportunity cost of not starting nuclear projects
| now will surely be worse than attempting 100% renewables.
| The point is that we can invest in both.
|
| Why? It's the other way around, the actual cost of building
| nuclear instead of much cheaper and faster renewables
| causes an opportunity cost, because we can replace fossil
| fuels much faster building up renewables.
| ascar wrote:
| > It's the other way around, the actual cost of building
| nuclear instead of much cheaper and faster renewables
| causes an opportunity cost
|
| That's under the assumption the available money, hardware
| and labor of ramping up solar and building nuclear plants
| directly competes with each other. That's a pretty strong
| assumption and I highly doubt there is a strong enough
| link between any of those three for your argument to have
| significant impact.
|
| E.g. We should be able to drive rapid solar expansion
| with government money and subsidies while incentivcing
| big energy carriers to build nuclear plants.
| cycomanic wrote:
| No that's under the assumption that we have limited
| funding.
| ascar wrote:
| That's a non-answer to my comment. Limited funding and a
| available money is the same thing. The point is the
| funding isn't so limited that we couldn't do both as we
| run in other bottlenecks.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > 1. Cost per MW compared to renewables (~$150 vs ~$40 and
| falling). Here in the UK the government is promising to
| subsidise this to make it viable.
|
| You can't directly compare cost per generating capacity,
| because nuclear, gas, coal etc. are available according to
| schedule, while most renewables aren't. Adding storage around
| renewables to make them schedulable raises costs.
| dignick wrote:
| I'm a firm believer in distributed generation and storage,
| i.e. solar on the roof and battery on premises. This has
| the added benefits of reducing load on the grid and
| increasing resiliency. It should be required for all new
| buildings in regulations.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Raises cost, but it is still way below cost of nukes.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Nuclear in the UK has a capacity factor of around 60%.
| Availability is in the 70-80% range.
|
| Yeah it's (usually) planned, but it's a decently long time
| in which you need those gas plants.
|
| Why not just build solar instead and fuel those same gas
| plants with hydrogen or methane you plucked from the air
| with your $20-30/MWh unscheduled electricity?
|
| Plus, you can get solar and storage as an off the shelf
| item today as a retail customer for less per watt than
| recent reactors in UK/France or even USA. 8kW nameplate
| solar and 16kWh storage capacity is about $10k which
| matches 1kW of net from eg UK projects of around 2.5GW net
| for 26 billion pounds fairly closely.
|
| Yeah if you live far north or have a long cloudy month in
| winter you'll be relying on that gas plant, but so does the
| nuclear reactor. Plus you'll be dumping 10-20kWh/day into
| the grid on the good days. Provides a decent incentive to
| figure out how to store it, and even if you're only getting
| 5c/kWh for it, it'll pay for replacement in 7-10 years or
| so when prices have dropped another 50-80% without
| sacrificing your kilowatt.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Solar requires land area. Storage requires land area.
| Britain isn't that sunny - particularly not in winter.
|
| Nuclear has a very small footprint on a crowded island.
|
| Plus we have Rolls Royce SMRs who have been building
| nuclear reactors for a while.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| That is the admitted cost of Hinkley C and lower bound on
| the cost of Sizewell (it will go up, they always do).
| Sizewell is a rolls royce smr. Matching end user retail
| cost of solar. Right now. By the time sizewell comes
| online it'll be a fraction. It's also calculated with a
| 12.5% capacity factor which is winter in the UK. Add in
| overnight costs and it's extremely one sided.
|
| You could add as much net capacity as the UK has in
| nuclear in just above the space used for parking cars.
|
| You could add twice to four times that again just on
| detached house rooftops.
|
| Even as a commercial installation with no other purpose,
| a 4km square is hardly an insurmountable barrier.
|
| The initial capital budget of sizewell and hinkley alone
| could provide 30-80GW of nameplate solar or a rooftop
| system on every building in the country.
|
| If there are trillions in the pot, by all means go ham
| with fission, but when low carbon sources are fighting
| for the scraps left over after subsidizing fossil fuels
| we have to do the thing that is effective first.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| You can however price this in, and I doubt it accounts for
| 110$/MW. Furthermore, nuclear energy specifically _only_
| runs according to schedule. Reducing or raising output is
| expensive and slow.
| illiac786 wrote:
| EDF has published a paper stating they can scale 80% down
| and then up again, every day, within 30min.
|
| In practice, they have done something like 20% within an
| hour. It was early 2019, there was such a crazy wind that
| they had to reduce nuclear production also (after already
| reducing coal, gas etc. to the min).
|
| I think what they really can do is somewhere in between.
|
| sources, it was on l'energeek, but in French.
| belorn wrote:
| For simplicity, lets use the cost of for every $ that a
| KG of green hydrogen costs, this mean that the cost per
| MW will be 30x of that. So if green hydrogen cost $1/KG
| you the cost in term of MW will be $30.
|
| The current cost of green hydrogen is somewhere between
| $2 -> $12. That is the production cost. The market price
| for green hydrogen sits around $4-$20, since there are
| multiple industries that demands hydrogen.
|
| For 110 to break even the hydrogen need to cost $3.5/kg,
| and in order to really displace natural gas, it is
| estimated that it need to reach $1/kg.
|
| Now I noticed that those $150/MW is not a range, so I
| took a look. Projected nuclear LCOE costs for plants
| built 2020-2025 places nuclear around $27/MW to $147/MW
| depending on financing and country (source: OECD Nuclear
| Energy Agency's (NEA's) calculation). Russia has the
| lowest cost and Slovakia or Japan (depending on financing
| method) has the highest.
|
| So in summery, it can definitively cost more than $110/MW
| to produce viable green storage solution, especially in
| northern countries where low duration lithium batteries
| is not a working solution for long winter periods with
| low wind production and the sun is only up for a max few
| hours per day. Nuclear can also be much cheaper depending
| on where it is built and how it is financed.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Why would opex and amortised capital scale with fuel
| price?
| belorn wrote:
| The report is likely this one: https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2019-12...
|
| The $147 figure is basically the worst case scenario.
| jules wrote:
| > You can however price this in, and I doubt it accounts
| for 110$/MW.
|
| What do you base this on?
| legulere wrote:
| Scheduling also raises costs though. Costs don't go down
| much for nuclear power plants if you let them run at
| reduced output. Nuclear also isn't as reliable as it seems
| as it can be seen in France.
|
| Renewables even have the advantage that they produce
| electricity mostly when it's needed. Photovoltaics during
| the day and wind during winter when heating is most needed.
| fredestine wrote:
| macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his
| last mandate before realising that being woke made france
| broke (luckily not like germany broke - you know like in
| a way that when there is no sun or wind they need to call
| Putin to send some energy) now he reverted his thinking
| because money and energy is more important than beliefs
| when you needs them. just like usa or germany reactivated
| coal and biden is selling fracked gas to europe at gold
| price.
| Krasnol wrote:
| > macron removed investment and focus on nuclear in his
| last mandate before realising that being woke made france
| broke
|
| None of those problems OP described have anything to do
| with that overblown statement. Investment may have been
| removed for FUTURE projects but not for current operation
| which is highly subsidised by the French taxpayer
| guaranteeing the fixed price the Government decides on.
|
| Also Germany reactivated those dirty plants also to help
| France out. The whole European grid is helping the
| nuclear nation out and will continue to do so until
| France diversifies its power generation infrastructure.
| downrightmike wrote:
| The problem is energy companies and the entrenched family
| assholes that run them. Three Mile Island was being forced to
| push ahead and use the crane to move the vessel, even though it
| WAS damaged and would have likely lead to a meltdown. Engineers
| knew it wasn't safe and were punished and fired for not using
| the crane unless it was actually checked and in working order.
| The public is right to be wary of nuclear when these are the
| types of assholes that put all our lives in danger.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| If I could upvote this a hundred times. It is easy to mock
| the public for not getting nuclear power and being paranoid.
|
| People today have really forgotten how much people got lied
| to constantly about nuclear power. France which they like to
| pull out as this amazing nuclear country built all the
| reactors they hype up by faking safety checks on nuclear
| reactors.
|
| It is just really naive to assume every nuclear plant is run
| by the books.
|
| People complain about over regulation of the nuclear
| industry. Yeah... they kind of brought that upon themselves.
| mlsu wrote:
| If you're surprised by the lack of paperwork in fission
| reactors, just wait till you see (or... not!) the
| documentation on coal and ng powerplants!
| ncmncm wrote:
| Coal and NG are, like fission, on their way out.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| You argue this a lot on HN but real world shows the
| opposite happening.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually in several instances nuclear operators have
| managed to reduce regulations compared to coal and NG.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Exactly. People here on HN unsurprisingly approach nuclear
| with this naive enthusiasm that's operating under the
| assumption of a spherical cow in vacuum.
|
| In reality the nuclear lobby heavily got politics to relax
| safety requirements, operators are corrupt and cut costs at
| every corner, inspections are not performed at all or not
| thoroughly, and when important decisions are being made, like
| where to store the waste, it's where politicians in charge
| find it convenient, and not where scientists and engineers
| actually recommend. Then you end up with metal containers in
| a salt mine, rusting away because thirty years ago who could
| have known the connection between salt and oxidation.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| And how is it better when those assholes kill tens of
| thousands with coal every year instead?
|
| If we lynched a few of them every time a nuclear reactor blew
| up we'd have a lot fewer energy related deaths and the market
| would eventually self correct.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Coal is on its way out.
|
| It is now cheaper to build a new solar farm to replace a
| coal plant than just to operate the already built coal
| plant. It is as cheap to build renewables as to operate an
| already built and paid for nuke.
|
| Renewables cost is still in free fall. In ten years,
| renewables will be so cheap that overbuilding 10x, 20x,
| will be cheaper than operating a nuke.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Ok, we replaced a coal plant with solar panels.
|
| What do we do at night?
|
| Build storage for the solar plant? That's more expensive
| than a nuclear plant of the same capacity.
|
| Build long range high voltage power lines? Again, more
| expensive than building a nuclear power plant of the same
| capacity.
|
| People have been spoiled by the incredible energy ROI,
| portability and responsiveness of fossil fuels and think
| everything has the same capacity.
|
| It doesn't.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Storage is cheap and getting cheaper even faster than
| solar or wind.
|
| By the time we need storage (after enough renewable
| generation is built to charge it from) storage will be
| very cheap. It will not be made of lithium batteries.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| By the time storage is ready we won't need electricity
| because climate change will have made industrial
| civilization impossible.
| ncmncm wrote:
| This is the "civilization will collapse before we can get
| around to reducing our CO2 output enough" argument.
| Wasting time and money building reactors instead of
| spending that on renewables brings collapse nearer. If we
| can't beat the deadline with renewables, we can't beat it
| at all. Beating the deadline might not be possible, but
| we will not know until we do, or collapse. Choosing
| collapse is always wrong.
|
| Storage is easy. It is just now an overwhelmingly better
| use of capital to build generating capacity, to displace
| carbon combustion, than to build storage. It is only
| after you have more than enough to displace almost all
| your carbon combustion that storage is a very useful at
| all.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >If we can't beat the deadline with renewables, we can't
| beat it at all.
|
| Reactors have been ready for 80 years.
|
| We keep putting them off because nuclear is scary and
| vaporware tech will save us.
|
| Here we are, yet again, 10 years away from the green
| nirvana that was promised every 10 years since the 80s.
| Meanwhile Germany is building coal plants again and
| Britain has melted.
|
| I am not committing suicide because of your fetish for
| solar panels and wind turbines.
|
| >It is only after you have more than enough to displace
| almost all your carbon combustion that storage is a very
| useful at all.
|
| I guess we can just turn society off at night.
| ncmncm wrote:
| To dwell on might-have-beens is to choose collapse. Fact
| is, to have built your nukes would have given us rashes
| of Chernobyls and Fukushimas, every year or two instead
| of every decade or two.
|
| Germany is not, in fact, building coal plants. Germany is
| building wind and solar farms.
|
| Until you have enough renewables to charge your storage,
| you burn NG at night. It would be stupid to burn NG to
| charge up storage, as stupid as to burn NG when you have
| storage charged and ready.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >To dwell on might-have-beens is to choose collapse.
|
| Sounds good. Let's build nuclear reactors until we
| replace all energy generation with them. Dwelling on
| might-have-beens is to choose collapse after all.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > By the time we need storage
|
| We already need it. During summer we have an
| overabundance of energy. It would be so nice to have it
| stored and used in winter, wouldn't it?
|
| Oh wait. "Cheap storage" in no way, shape or form
| translate into _efficient_ storage. You might have to
| cover half of Europe in batteries to store just a few
| weeks worth of energy.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Assholes are just that. But the issue is that if nuclear
| fucks up, that land is useless, and since those assholes
| run it, it has a high likely hood of happening. Half life
| of plutonium is 24k years, so it is much worse than coal,
| because it will kill for generations and last far longer.
| IE _everything_ in that area DIES for hundreds of thousands
| of years.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > It runs 24/7 on a tiny land and material footprint.
|
| Isn't that a myth though ? Nuclear plants have planned and
| unplanned maintenance downtime. They actually have enough of
| these in my country that it's deemed unreliable or as reliable
| as wind turbines (depends on who you ask).
| smaudet wrote:
| I think tiny relative to a coal installation? I'm just
| guessing here, though, all nuclear facilities I have seen are
| fairly enormous, albeit their size is small compared to the
| number of required non-nuclear plants it would take to
| replace their energy output.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Obviously my comment is about service availability, not
| land surface.
| cratermoon wrote:
| See also "Former fusion scientist on why we won't have fusion
| power by 2040" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| > It runs 24/7 on a tiny land and material footprint.
|
| How much cooling water does it use? Who'll want to drink it?
| How much waterwill 'lots more regular old LWR fission reactors'
| need, and where will it come from? Oh, and let's see the hands
| of those who want one in their back yard. 'Whoops'.
|
| > It's way easier. It has been working fine since the 1950s.
|
| Gosh, I never heard 'fine' used in that way before. I could
| paste in a list of dozens of failures, leaks (including
| tritium), accidents (public and hushed-up). Look away from San
| Onofre, that was just a one-time expense. Why, I'd even bet it
| will continue to be "safe, clean, and too cheap to meter",
| guys. /s
| JohnBooty wrote:
| and let's see the hands of those who want one in their back
| yard. 'Whoops'
|
| Me. Actually I've already lived in the back yard of one.
| Extremely populous suburb of a major American city.
|
| Apparently lots of people don't mind having one in their back
| yard.
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| I would rather see some push towards high temperature reactors.
| Whether gas cooled or molten salt. Point is it that if we have
| high temperature differentials we can more easily do thermal
| storage or produce hydrogen. Both are kind of important combos
| for renewable energy.
|
| Wind, solar, battery and some kind of variant of hydrogen
| economy is bound to stay/evolve and nuclear light to be built
| with that in mind so it can be more of a complementary
| technology rather than living in an alternative universe.
| godelski wrote:
| Honestly, I don't understand why we can't do both. I don't
| think this has to be framed as a zero sum problem (I think way
| too many issues are naively framed that way). With reference to
| the article, the funding levels over the past decade (globally)
| were roughly $200m/yr. That's really nothing in terms of
| government money and well within the realm that just the US
| could sustain such an effort alone. It would be roughly 0.004%
| of our yearly budget! That's an insanely low amount of money to
| spend given the potential upsides. You're right that there's
| weapons proliferation problems with both, but honestly that
| also seems like a good argument for pulling that funding out of
| what is already allocated to military budgets (not trying to
| defend nuclear weapons here, but we do have to acknowledge the
| existence of the military industrial complex and that they
| dictate a lot of the US budget).
|
| > Anyway let's ~~just~~ do fission you guys.
|
| So I agree with you. Let's do fission, but not _just_ fission.
| Let's put a lot of money into it and bring down the costs. The
| cost of climate change clearly far outweighs the cost of
| nuclear plants and waste. And that the waste really isn't a
| problem, as you yourself have extensively written about. These
| arguments always go "nuclear vs x" and honestly I want to see
| "fission + fusion + solar + wind + hydro + batteries." I don't
| see why we can't have it all. The zero sum arguments seem to
| make such a dream more difficult to achieve.
|
| Also, good to see you back. Always glad to see your input on
| these posts.
| smaudet wrote:
| > The cost of climate change clearly far outweighs the cost
| of nuclear plants and waste.
|
| Um, yes until you factor in failure rates due to incompetence
| + natural failure. Chernobyl, look it up, massive cost,
| massive loss of land, death/cancer rate of all exposed nearly
| 100%.
|
| Until you can solve the "corrupt bureaucrat cuts corners he
| doesn't understand" problem, and also demonstrate that the
| failure of a single reactor doesn't cascade and cause every
| reactor to blow (if you increase the density of reactor
| distribution a single fallout has the potential to cascade to
| every reactor).
|
| I remain skeptical about the fuel waste issue being solved,
| I've heard that a number of times and its not exactly been
| true, what is usually meant is that the fuel can be re-used
| somewhat indefinitely, after being repurposed in special
| containment facilities, not that the spent fuel safety issue
| is resolved.
|
| And, it won't even solve the climate change issue - even
| after going 100% electricity and/or renewable fuels, we still
| have a considerable chemical infrastructure to resolve, and
| we still have the heat waste issue to resolve (making things
| electrical doesn't solve energy and chemical expenditure
| affecting weather patterns, albeit it is better than pumping
| CO2), an infrastructure which will need to be utilized to
| create said nuclear reactors.
|
| Climate change will slowly roast us all to death, a nuclear
| failure will, instantly fry us all to molten pulp, I know
| which one I prefer.
| fastball wrote:
| > Death rate 100%
|
| Pretty sure the death rate is 100% for exposure to
| literally anything given enough time...
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Climate change will slowly roast us all to death, a
| nuclear failure will, instantly fry us all to molten pulp,
| I know which one I prefer.
|
| If you believe that even the worst nuclear accident at
| power plant will "instantly fry us all to molten pulp" in
| any appreciable range (while climate change is worldwide),
| the you are mistaken
|
| > death/cancer rate of all exposed nearly 100%.
|
| It is completely untrue. Even among
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_liquidators it is
| not true.
| smaudet wrote:
| > If you believe that even the worst nuclear accident at
| power plant will "instantly fry us all to molten pulp" in
| any appreciable range (while climate change is
| worldwide), the you are mistaken
|
| I am not wrong, in a world dotted with miniature fission
| reactors, as the most extreme pro-fission people would
| like to favor. If you can build one in space, and it
| powers the whole earth, that's obviously a very different
| story than building them every city block.
|
| I am also not wrong about the effects of radiation on the
| human body, when used as a bomb nuclear weapons literally
| melt people into goo, ofc with a reactor there are
| various safeguards but the thing causing the flesh-melt
| is still occurring, so maybe less instantaneous melt and
| more gradual boils and blisters leading to severe
| internal cancers as your cascade of nuclear reactors
| around the city all blow in a beautiful chain reaction...
|
| > It is completely untrue. Even among
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_liquidators it is
| not true.
|
| It's not untrue if you define exposed, not to be
| disingenuous, but those actually exposed to the reactor
| meltdown, did not survive. Those experiencing second hand
| exposure in e.g. the town, obviously did not all drop
| dead, but had increased risk of cancer, death, and those
| globally exposed, well many fewer dead or at risk of
| cancer.
|
| So unfortunately when speaking so imprecisely it actually
| is true, just not in the way you imagine. Even your
| wikipedia article admits among the liquidators the death
| rate was almost at _least_ 20% by some estimates, and I
| would presume these people are wearing some protective
| equipment, so calling them "exposed" is somewhat
| disingenous in and of itself...
| matkoniecz wrote:
| If you use unexpected definition of "exposed" then it
| would be better to mention it directly...
|
| Yeah, obviously direct exposure to core kills. In the
| same way being pulled through hydropower turbine kills,
| and ending in furnace of gas/coal/wood heated power plant
| will kill you.
|
| Nuclear power still has vastly lower death ratio per
| produced energy than other ways generating power anyway.
|
| > I am not wrong, in a world dotted with miniature
| fission reactors, as the most extreme pro-fission people
| would like to favor.
|
| You would be still wrong. Building atom bomb factories
| doubling as power plants (Chernobyl design) in every
| city, and then deliberately triggering such catastrophe
| in every single one still is not getting this result.
|
| With miniature fission reactors - also not.
|
| You would not get "instantly fry us all to molten pulp"
| even in case of deliberate use of all nuclear weapons by
| omnicidal world government trying to murder as many
| people as possible.
| smaudet wrote:
| Perhaps I am wrong to the degree of which we are doomed
| in various scenarios, but I am not wrong that serious
| effects would occur.
|
| My concern is - catastrophic chaining failure of nuclear
| plants, which I must assume you would not think would be
| a good thing, and would cause 'grave public harm',
| better? Not arguing over exactly how flesh melted the
| general populous is.
|
| If you remove "instantly fry us all to molten pulp" and
| replace with "fry us to molten pulp", that may be more
| true, I don't know that the general public will care much
| if it is 10% of the populous or 100% of the populous who
| is getting fried by radiation burns and subjected to
| carcinogenic materials _which we have no methods to
| contain_ , effectively it might as well be everyone.
|
| > hydropower turbine kills, and ending in furnace of
| gas/coal/wood heated power plant
|
| Sure, but we can drain water, and we can put out fires
| (water, flame retardants). We can manage these systems.
| Nobody but the most crazy out-of-touch pro-nuclear person
| is going to try to claim that we can directly control
| neutrons, free particles, or the half lives of deadly
| carcinogens, or that we can filter them from our water
| supplies.
| nl wrote:
| I'm sorry. I'm probably more antinuclear than you but a
| lot of the things you are saying are just ignorant.
|
| For example nuclear bombs melting flesh is because of the
| extreme heat, nothing that is unique to the nuclear
| process.
|
| You'd be a more effective advocate for anti-nuclear
| viewpoints by learning some stuff first.
| smaudet wrote:
| Ok, well would you mind linking some good starting
| materials?
|
| And I think you maybe are more ignorant than you care to
| admit as well:
|
| "is that a very appreciable fraction of the energy
| liberated goes into radiant heat and light"
|
| https://www.atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/med/med
| _ch...
|
| To me that doesn't sound like "oh man the temperature in
| the room just went up", more like "oh man I just got a
| really bad sunburn".
| jeltz wrote:
| So how do you think that we should solve energy storage?
| Both batteries and dams are dangerous and can lead to
| disasters. Dams failing have killed way more people than
| nuclear ever has.
| smaudet wrote:
| Well first of all energy storage, is not production, but
| as you asked:
|
| 1) Reduced need for energy storage. Right to repair for
| everything, write code that is efficient and lower power,
| distributed systems which don't require complex
| centralized systems to run. Taxes on unused compute
| cycles to help create incentives for this, perhaps.
|
| 2) For actual energy storage, something like the sand
| heat system recently put into use in Scandinavia, or the
| mechanical earth dams (store energy in potential energy
| mass, less dangerous than an actual water dam, a lot
| easier to build). For immediate electric storage at scale
| you can do e.g. saline water storage tanks which hold
| mild electric charge, who knows maybe there is some inert
| chemistry which could be devised for a safer
| transportable version of a lithium ion battery...
|
| 3) For energy production, I am a long time advocate of
| geothermal. There's no real downside, besides digging
| holes and I guess maybe a well collapse, but you're
| limited to loss of whatever is in the whole/immediate
| surrounding in the case of a cave in, there are no
| engineering problems to solve except pumping water
| around, which is a well known task. Solar/wind for ships,
| airplanes, space vehicles, electric/hydrogen for
| storage/consumption scenarios where the grid is not
| accessible (remote locations e.g. the poles, alaska,
| siberia, African/Asian planes)
| tlonny wrote:
| > write code that is efficient and lower power,
| distributed systems which don't require complex
| centralized systems to run.
|
| huh?
| smaudet wrote:
| It's marginal compared to the other power expenses to be
| sure, but computing is another rising power cost. Besides
| my AC, and cooking, I don't have any regular power
| expenditures other than digital devices, so it seems
| reasonable to me to want to optimize power expenditure
| there.
|
| Regarding the distributed vs centralized, the reasoning
| is large data centers are inefficient and could be
| replaced mostly with local, low power systems which are
| barely on at all, versus constant-on, constant-ready
| server rack systems.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > mechanical earth dams (store energy in potential energy
| mass, less dangerous than an actual water dam, a lot
| easier to build)
|
| a lot easier to build?
|
| This claim seems wrong, given that pumped-storage
| hydroelectricity is in actual use, when this is purely
| theoretical.
|
| "mechanical earth dams" gives info about water dams - is
| it existing even as a theoretic design?
| smaudet wrote:
| https://www.energyvault.com/gravity
|
| Its a company with as I understand it proven designs.
|
| Besides, the concept is trivial and applicable and
| replicable by almost anyone. I don't understand why there
| is so much skepticism around these things...
| dmitriid wrote:
| Nuclear energy as a concept is _trivial_. There are a lot
| of details between "concept is trivial" and "it's
| practical at scale"
| freemint wrote:
| Batteries are dangerous? What do you mean by that?
|
| > Dams failing have killed way more people than nuclear
| ever has.
|
| And this solely due to one incident under communism where
| damn was not maintained.
| reddog wrote:
| Well the 2900 people who died in the Johnstown dam
| failure immediatly come to mind.
|
| But its much, much worse than that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure
|
| If had the same risk management mindset for dams as we do
| for nuclear, we would also be banning hydroelectic.
| justforthisandn wrote:
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Sure, that's a good and fair point. I shouldn't say I oppose
| fusion R&D. I feel more like we should be more focused on
| deploying 100s of serialized LWR fission plants right now
| alongside all the wind/solar/batteries/hydro to solve climate
| change, while also investing R&D into things like advanced
| fission and fusion, and geothermal. There's certainly an
| under-investment in low carbon energy tech in general
| compared to the world GDP imho.
|
| Still, I do feel that some fusion hype is partially due to
| people not giving fission enough credit though.
|
| Happy to be back, thanks!
| cinntaile wrote:
| > Still, I do feel that some fusion hype is partially due
| to people not giving fission enough credit though
|
| I wonder if this is more a marketing thing. Fission has a
| bad rep so people try to evade it by getting funding for
| fusion or SMRs (I know this is fission too) instead. Which
| people don't associate with classical nuclear reactor tech.
| Even though it's probably better to just put that money
| towards a new AP1000 from a cost perspective.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| It's extremely unlikely any more AP1000s will be built in
| the US. All projects that were in the development
| pipeline have been cancelled due to the spectacular
| financial failures that Summer and Vogtle have been.
|
| The only way it could happen is if the feds took on
| construction risk.
| cinntaile wrote:
| That's a fair point, I don't know if there are any other
| fission reactor candidates that have a better shot at
| succeeding? Maybe SMRs are the only possible candidates
| even though the economics ($/kWh) are likely worse, if
| they can build them on time then at least we're working
| with a predictable outcome.
| Retric wrote:
| The issue when you say let's build X00 new LWR is just cost
| vs benefit. Something like 5 Trillion in additional nuclear
| subsidies might slow down climate change a low single digit
| percentage over the next 30 years. This relates not just to
| the high cost of nuclear but also the delay between
| deciding to build nuclear and actually getting low carbon
| energy from a nuclear reactor.
|
| Spend 1/4th that on solar or wind subsidies and you get
| vastly more carbon free energy sooner without any concerns
| for politically inconvenient disasters. 1 nuclear reactor
| can be quite safe, but 500 of them is 500 times the risk.
| Even a largely non issue Fukushima style disaster is still
| a major political and economic issue.
|
| Fission is quite useful, and I hope it continues to provide
| largely carbon free energy into the future. It's just not a
| great use of the resources required to make a real
| difference.
|
| The outlook for Fusion over the next few decades doesn't
| look very good, but it's also received vastly less
| investment. It's IMO a low odds but low cost bet that might
| pay off but probably won't.
| justforthisandn wrote:
| freemint wrote:
| 500 is 1-(1-risk)^500 the risk
| Retric wrote:
| This isn't one of those cases where the only thing you
| care about is if something happens or not as humanity
| would need to deal with and thus pay for every nuclear
| accident. As there is no discount if it happens twice vs
| once every reactor is an independent risk. Thus, 500
| reactors is 500x the risk.
|
| You might argue multiple major disasters might result in
| more reactors being shut down as knee jerk reaction, but
| shutting down 500 additional reactors is 5x more
| expensive than shutting down 100.
| ncmncm wrote:
| ... which is much larger than 500x, approaching near-
| certainty, for any non-negligible value of unit risk.
| godelski wrote:
| Yeah, then we're on the same page.
|
| But one note, I don't think fusion has the same uphill
| battle that fission does. You mentioned that the fission
| industry just hasn't been able to properly demonstrate what
| they can do, but I don't think this is entirely it. We do
| have to consider the decades worth of campaigning and
| lobbying by coal and gas that went after nuclear. That
| these campaigns even infiltrated the biggest green lobbying
| groups: Sierra Nevada and Green Peace. Fusion doesn't have
| this same battle to overcome. I'm in the state just south
| of you and we're very pro green, but our green politicians
| still talk about fission and "the dangers." Hanford is
| still discussed with a lot of fervor. Such history and
| momentum doesn't exist with fusion other than "20 years
| away." I understand why a lot of people have effectively
| given up and why a lot of climate scientists don't bring it
| up, but will admit that they aren't against fission
| (usually with that precise wording). Honestly, I think it
| is more on the climate scientists at this point to be vocal
| about it.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Honestly, I think it is more on the climate
| scientists at this point to be vocal about it.
|
| I think you hit the nail on the head here.
|
| It's understandable that science-illiterate, climate
| change-denier types fear fission. The fossil fuel
| industry has done an excellent job percolating their pro
| fossil-fuel agenda and fomenting fear of the unknown.
| This is the unavoidable enemy.
|
| The only way to counter this would be for green types
| (Greenpeace, etc, as you say) and climate scientists to
| unite and promote fission. I do not think this is
| remotely likely, but it is the only thing that would
| remotely stand a chance of countering the fossil fuel
| industry in the battle for public mindset and votes. I
| would be absolutely stunned if this happened before
| billions are displaced due to fossil fuel-caused climate
| change, and I actually don't think it will happen even
| then. The status quo will continue as long as the fossil
| fuel companies remain rich... so, basically until
| civilizational collapse.
|
| Simply put, fission got an extremely raw deal. It was
| stabbed in the back and buried by the people who _should_
| have supported it, based on their stated goals and
| beliefs.
|
| Nothing can survive that.
| joak wrote:
| This conversation seems to me a bit outdated: building a
| fission reactor takes one or two decades and its kWh is
| costlier than alternatives. To get something cheaper, we
| need to wait for the next gen of technology, in one or
| two decades. Lucky if we can compete with the costs of
| solar, wind and batteries in a decade.
|
| Even with the support of greens, government, scientists,
| etc this is going no where.
|
| Nuclear fission is dead, why trying to revive it? What's
| the point?
| manmal wrote:
| The problem is that the sun is not always shining (and
| half the year not at the right angle), and wind is not
| always blowing. Unless a country has access to always-on
| sources (like sea currents), energy must be stored or
| things must be burned. Storage is hard and energy
| intensive to build, and many countries would need a few
| months worth of storage to never bother about burning
| stuff again. And that's _a lot_, you wouldn't believe the
| kind of power needed to support some branches of
| industry, and they won't shut down in winter of course.
| adrianN wrote:
| Storage is certainly not harder to build than nuclear
| power plants. Power-to-Gas is technologically quite
| straightforward. The research that's currently happening
| is just to make it cheaper until we have enough
| renewables for grid-scale storage to make sense. The
| really hard part of becoming carbon neutral is the
| sectors other than electricity, e.g. heating and
| transportation, but nuclear power won't help you there.
| manmal wrote:
| Power to gas (incl reverse) is terribly lossy right now.
| adrianN wrote:
| Surplus renewable electricity is incredibly cheap. Losses
| matter a lot less than the cost of the infrastructure you
| need for storage. Batteries have great efficiency, but
| they're not cheap. We already have a bunch of
| infrastructure that can handle gas.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| Why do you think fission can't help with heating? Heat is
| one of the by-products of running a reactor.
|
| E.g.: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-power-could-
| heat-your-h...
|
| https://www.powermag.com/district-heating-supply-from-
| nuclea...
| adrianN wrote:
| Because the problematic part is switching millions and
| millions of buildings from gas and oil to either heat
| pumps or district heating, not generating heat or
| electricity.
| cycomanic wrote:
| If your grid is large enough (and that is already
| happening in Europe for economic reasons), you have
| enough geographic distribution to average out variations.
| There have been studies that showed you could run the US
| on something like 500% overcapacity with a fully
| integrated grid using only renewables and no storage.
|
| Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't
| load follow, so even with a combined nuclear/renewables
| you still either need significant overcapacity or some
| sort of peaker. So you haven't actually solved the
| variation problem.
|
| Finally, because cost for nuclear is largely dominated by
| capex (construction cost, both in dollars and CO2
| foodprint), not running the nuclear plant as close to
| capacity as possible will even more increase the price
| and also reduce the CO2 lifetime emission. In usual
| comparisons which puts nuclear on par with renewables,
| nuclear is assumed to run essentially 24/7 while
| solar/wind are based on some statistical uptime. If we
| operate a nuclear not close to capacity its lifetime
| carbon footprint becomes significantly worse.
| DennisP wrote:
| Long-distance transmission is at least as slow to build
| as nuclear, at least in the US. There are projects that
| have foundered for decades.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Moreover nuclear are slow moving, they typically don't
| load follow
|
| Which is not entirely true: https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
|
| Even older designs could do load following.
| logifail wrote:
| The problem isn't really to what extent nuclear is load-
| following, but that the economics of nuclear look even
| worse than they already do if we want to follow the
| cheapest generator.
|
| To be blunt: if the sun is shining and it's windy, no-one
| really wants to buy a nuclear plant's output. Not at an
| agreed fixed price, or possibly at any price.
|
| The idea of nuclear getting paid the same price - or
| worse, an index-linked price - for the lifetime of the
| plant, regardless of what the future holds, and even on
| those sunny and windy days, just seems horrendously
| anticompetitive.
|
| If nuclear is as necessary, competitive and flexible as
| some make out, then go right ahead and build your
| plant(s). Just don't expect taxpayers to underwrite
| anything.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > if we want to follow the cheapest generator.
|
| Energy isn't just about generation
|
| > If nuclear is as necessary, competitive and flexible as
| some make out, then go right ahead and build your
| plant(s). Just don't expect taxpayers to underwrite
| anything.
|
| By the same logic taxpayers shouldn't underwrite any
| renewables: they are significantly slower than nuclear,
| and have literally zero base load capacity.
| logifail wrote:
| > By the same logic taxpayers shouldn't underwrite any
| renewables: they are significantly slower than nuclear,
| and have literally zero base load capacity.
|
| The cost for offshore wind projects has fallen so fast in
| the UK that the many of the latest projects don't need
| subsidies, see this report from Imperial College
| (London)[0], in fact they'll be paying the government,
| see this article from Bloomberg.[1]
|
| I'm pretty sceptical about the phrase 'base load', when
| it comes up, such as in a HN discussion[2] from a last
| week, it seems to be used to describe wanting to choose
| slow and/or expensive power plants.
|
| EDIT: See also this[3] recent HN discussion, in which it
| was pointed out "California has put emphasis on
| renewables and if the nuclear power station isn't
| guaranteed to provide base load then it's too expensive
| to operate"
|
| [0] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/200353/offshore-wind-
| power-c... [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-13/high-
| powe... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32152588
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31610996
| manmal wrote:
| Building wind and solar to 500% overcapacity sounds like
| a great waste of resources and space though.
| DennisP wrote:
| And makes nuclear look a lot more cost-competitive by
| comparison.
| cycomanic wrote:
| But currently solar/wind are ~3x cheaper than nuclear and
| falling rapidly. So the 500% overcapacity would likely in
| the end cost the same as 100% capacity of nuclear.
| However, with nuclear you need at least 200% capacity as
| well (maintenance, hot days, not being able to load
| follow fast enough). So which one is the waste of
| resources?
| delroth wrote:
| > building a fission reactor takes one or two decades
|
| This is not universally true. Looking at South Korea's
| construction times for example[1], you'll see that it's
| averaging between 5-7 years per reactor, all the way into
| the 2000s and 2010s. Japan shows similar numbers[2], and
| they're currently in the process of restarting their
| nuclear investments following the accident at Fukushima
| Daiichi. Same story for China[3].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_
| Korea#B...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nucl
| ear_rea...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nucl
| ear_rea...
| moogly wrote:
| I feel you are cherry-picking those South Korean numbers.
| If you look at the latest ones that started construction
| in 2009-2012, it's taken 10 years (and some are still not
| started). That's "one decade". Extrapolating the
| construction time inflation, you could imagine any future
| developments will take longer still.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| building a fission reactor takes one or two decades
| and its kWh is costlier than alternatives
|
| It didn't and doesn't need to be that way. Obviously we
| need strong regulatory oversight over nuclear power, but
| a big part of the cost is the need to satisfy incredibly
| hostile regulations imposed by politicians who are (a)
| pandering to public fear (b) heavily influence by the
| fossil fuel industry.
|
| Also, talking about kWh cost in the short term is...
| missing a large portion of the point. Burning fossil
| fuels is only "cheap" if all the long term damage is
| ignored. Let's talk about how cheap it is once we start
| truly paying the price for climate change to the tune of
| billions of lives and many quadrillions of dollars.
| moogly wrote:
| > a big part of the cost is the need to satisfy
| incredibly hostile regulations imposed by politicians who
| are (a) pandering to public fear (b) heavily influence by
| the fossil fuel industry
|
| People keep on parroting this, but could you list what
| these "incredibly hostile regulations" entail?
|
| The only "new" thing I know of is the requirement in
| certain places (like in Sweden) to have ICSS, Independent
| Core Cooling System, to prevent a Fukushima situation,
| plus to prevent a meltdown caused by what happened at
| Forsmark Nuclear Plant in Sweden 2006[1]
|
| ICSS isn't that expensive BTW. Vattenfall cited the cost
| of adding ICSS to their 5 reactors to about 3 billion SEK
| in 2020. That's about 300 million US dollars with today's
| exchange rate.[2]
|
| [1]: https://analys.se/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/05/forsmark-incide...
|
| [2]: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Swedish-
| reactors...
| endominus wrote:
| >ICSS isn't that expensive BTW. Vattenfall cited the cost
| of adding ICSS to their 5 reactors to about 3 billion SEK
| in 2020. That's about 300 million US dollars with today's
| exchange rate.
|
| $300m seems pretty expensive to me as a cost to add to
| what is already the safest energy source in the world by
| terawatt-hour produced[0]. One-fifth the death rate of
| rooftop solar. 0.025% as dangerous as oil. Every
| terawatt-hour of energy a coal power plant produces
| results in as many deaths as one hundred Fukushima
| "situations."
|
| [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-
| rate-worldw...
| moogly wrote:
| Rubbish.
|
| Considering a single reactor costs EUR11-19 billion[1][2]
| to build in Western Europe currently (Olkiluoto 3,
| Flamanville (we haven't seen the final bill for that one
| yet)), an additional 300 million dollars is a drop in the
| bucket and not the thing that will make the project go
| from viable to nonviable.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Powe
| r_Plant#... (final)
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Po
| wer_Plan... (projected, not final)
| endominus wrote:
| Step 1: Nuclear reactors are so expensive already,
| additional costs to increase safety barely matter in
| their overall price! This additional regulation isn't
| enough to make a viable plant nonviable.
|
| Step 2: Nuclear reactors are so expensive it makes no
| sense to provision new ones when renewables are just
| around the corner! Just keep the current coal power
| plants running while we take another decade to increase
| solar grid capacity by a few terawatts.
|
| Step 3: Go to step 1.
|
| See also; heap fallacy. Seriously, coal power generation
| is so bad that if we had to reduce safety regulations to
| the point that we were having a Chernobyl-level meltdown
| _every month_ to replace all coal with nuclear plants, we
| would be significantly better off for it. It 's not even
| close. We could literally completely deregulate safety of
| nuclear power plants and be safer overall.
|
| (Per the stats I shared earlier, coal power kills 100,000
| people per thousand terawatt-hours produced. The world
| produces roughly 44,000 tWh of coal energy, resulting in
| 4.4 million deaths per year. Casualty estimates of
| Chernobyl vary wildly, but even the most pessimistic
| estimate produced by Greenpeace, avowed anti-nuclear
| activists that they are, only totals 200,000. Coal power
| is almost twice as bad as having a Chernobyl every month)
| nl wrote:
| I think you underestimate how much lobbying the _nuclear_
| industry does.
|
| Here's the former head of the US Nuclear regulator
| talking about how he worked to reduce safety regulations
| to make it easier to build nuclear plants. Now he thinks
| no new nuclear power should ever be built:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-
| nucl...
| cycomanic wrote:
| > building a fission reactor takes one or two decades
|
| > and its kWh is costlier than alternatives
|
| > It didn't and doesn't need to be that way. Obviously we
| need strong regulatory oversight over nuclear power, but
| a big part of the cost is the need to satisfy incredibly
| hostile regulations imposed by politicians who are (a)
| pandering to public fear (b) heavily influence by the
| fossil fuel industry.
|
| That is not true, there was an HN submission which broke
| down the cost of nuclear construction (am on mobile and
| can't easily find it right now) and cost is largely
| dominated by construction cost, which to a large degree
| (>50%) are the same as a regular thermal power plant.
| Regarding regulations, the nuclear lobby is actually very
| strong, they even managed to reduce regulations for the
| steam-generating cycle compared to other power plants (I
| think this was in the US).
|
| > Also, talking about kWh cost in the short term is...
| missing a large portion of the point. Burning fossil
| fuels is only "cheap" if all the long term damage is
| ignored. Let's talk about how cheap it is once we start
| truly paying the price for climate change to the tune of
| billions of lives and many quadrillions of dollars.
|
| But the comparison is not to fossil fuels, the comparison
| is to renewables. If renewables are cheaper and faster
| (which is the case) they will enable us to move of fossil
| sources faster than nuclear, so the overall emitted CO2
| is less.
| just_boost_it wrote:
| Fuel diversification is important too. That's something
| Germany seems to have forgotten when they went all in on
| natural gas.
| logifail wrote:
| > > building a fission reactor takes one or two decades
| and its kWh is costlier than alternatives
|
| > It didn't and doesn't need to be that way [..] a big
| part of the cost is the need to satisfy incredibly
| hostile regulations [..]
|
| (Alleged over-)regulation is only part of the story.
|
| "analysis, done by a team of researchers at MIT, is
| remarkably comprehensive. For many nuclear plants, they
| have detailed construction records, broken out by which
| building different materials and labor went to, and how
| much each of them cost. There's also a detailed record of
| safety regulations and when they were instituted relative
| to construction. Finally, they've also brought in the
| patent applications filed by the companies who designed
| the reactors. The documents describe the motivations for
| design changes and the problems those changes were
| intended to solve."[0]
|
| "while safety regulations added to the costs, they were
| far from the primary factor. And deciding whether they
| were worthwhile costs would require a detailed analysis
| of every regulatory change in light of accidents like
| Three Mile Island and Fukushima"
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-
| nuclear-plan...
| jabl wrote:
| > Fusion doesn't have this same battle to overcome.
|
| Ha ha, Greenpeace has already per-emptively decided they
| hate fusion too.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Greenpeace gives no shit about Emperors having no
| clothes, so they've been pointing out the grave economic
| barriers to DT fusion, and also the implications of
| fusion for proliferation. And they're entirely right
| about that.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| People are scared of the word nuclear, and that applies
| to fusion as well.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >Honestly, I don't understand why we can't do both.
|
| Because we're been doing neither for 40 years.
| ncmncm wrote:
| And, _money is fungible_. A dollar spent on X is not spent
| on Y.
|
| This is not a difficult concept.
| neilwilson wrote:
| It seems to be, because there isn't a fixed amount of
| money.
|
| Money isn't the problem. Manpower and materials are the
| problem.
|
| Spending manpower and materials on X cannot be spent on
| Y. Manpower and materials are not fungible - at least not
| in the nuclear space where requirements are very high.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lven wrote:
| I tried to describe this problem in further detail in a post
| called con-fusion. Kind of sad to see money burn like this.
| https://lvenneri.com/blog/ConFusion
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Excellent post with lots of detail, thanks, and wow! I'm not
| alone in my skepticism it seems.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > For example, there are leaks of tiny amounts of tritium at
| some fission plants and people lose their minds.
|
| If a fusion reactor loses power, fusion ceases. The reactor
| shuts down.
|
| If a fission reactor loses power, fission continues. A reactor
| that cannot be cooled melts down.
|
| I don't think people will be as wary when fail safe reactor
| designs come off the drawing board and are in use long enough
| to have their own track record.
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/02/158134/fail-safe...
| lven wrote:
| This is not true. Fission reactors have to deal with decay
| heat, not fission reactions when cooling is lost. This can be
| managed. Fusion reactors also have decay heat. In new
| reactors like the Micro Modular Reactor, it's actually less
| decay heat than a fusion power plant. Please please read my
| post :https://lvenneri.com/blog/ConFusion#financial-risk-of-
| powerp...
| iambateman wrote:
| This was a great comment and very helpful.
|
| I think it's all a PR issue. The public doesn't really
| understand and there are a lot of lobbyists pushing every other
| kind of energy.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Agreed. The excitement in fusion indicates a total failure of
| fission people to effectively explain what they are capable
| of.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Or, the failure of (most of) those investing in fusion to
| understand just what has held back fission. It's not
| safety, waste, or fuel availability.
| malloryerik wrote:
| Maybe the current glow on fusion could actually brighten
| fission's prospects? At least that thought came to me while
| reading your original comment because fusion presents an
| opportunity to update the entire "nuclear" category in
| people's minds.
|
| Like when a child (or even an adult) says they don't like
| vegetables and it's pointed out to them that in fact they
| do like the vegetable called lettuce, so their statement
| needs updating. Now their attitudes can be reframed.
| ncmncm wrote:
| People making choices on power are not, in fact,
| children.
|
| Fission costs too much. Fusion would cost way more.
| Promoters of both have lied to the public continuously
| from day one. We have heard enough.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Yeah. The opposition and scaremongering from the fossil
| fuel industry and scaremongering science-deniers has been
| utterly effective. No surprise there.
|
| What's dismaying and frankly shocking is the utter failure
| of the nuclear industry to mount even a feeble defense in
| the public eye.
| selectodude wrote:
| There is zero risk, none, to government regulatory bodies
| when they say no. Saying yes is putting your ass on the
| line. The NRC has absolutely no reason to say yes to
| anything and there is a positive feedback loop for them
| to regulate nuclear out of existence in the US.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| That's only true because the public has been convinced
| that it's high risk high reward. Otherwise, you could say
| the same about anything. There's no reason to do
| _anything_ while in office.
| ncmncm wrote:
| You can repeat this forever, but you will be wrong
| forever.
|
| The people you credit with nixing nukes do not have that
| much influence. What did in nukes was nukes themselves.
| They cost too much, always have, and the constant
| drumbeat of violated regulations, slipshod construction,
| and lax operation all together make everyone eager for
| alternatives.
|
| And here come renewables, totally safe, work at any
| scale, cheap and getting cheaper. No one will miss nukes,
| their always-dodgy cost accounting, their burden on
| public funding, or their promoters' constant dishonesty.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| In the US the fission people promised a nuclear renaissance
| with the AP1000. They asked for and received additional
| subsidies in the form of loan guarantees.
|
| The two projects that resulted were unmitigated financial
| disasters. All AP1000 projects in the development pipeline
| were cancelled and no utility in their right mind will
| order one.
|
| This is entirely the fission people's fault.
| tenpies wrote:
| "There is a lot of money to be made from implement the wrong
| solution, as long as you are not part of the problem."
|
| * Adapted from a consultant proverb
| AughFuckFusion wrote:
| Tf say does the public have? This is a terrible excuse. The
| public doesn't have any say in the vast, vast, vast, vast,
| vast majority of decision making that happens in this
| country.... blame politicians ffs, not people who don't
| matter.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| You have clearly never been in the public comment session
| at a Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting. The public has
| a huge amount to do with it.
| AughFuckFusion wrote:
| 7952 wrote:
| Have you been to a consultation event for a wind farm? It
| can get pretty aggressive.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| blame politicians ffs, not people who don't matter.
|
| Politicians and parties base their platforms on polling
| data and voting patterns.
|
| Sure -- it's a highly inefficient system, and there are
| plenty other inputs into their behavior.
|
| But at the end of the day, they still have to actually win
| elections. It's a crap system in many ways but public
| opinion definitely matters.
| AughFuckFusion wrote:
| shawn-butler wrote:
| fusion has better marketing in the marketplace of the
| uninformed. "Harnesses the power of the sun" vs "nuclear bombs"
|
| I'm sure the greens will try and tear it down it if it ever
| comes to commercial viability and start calling it
| thermonuclear power or some nonsense.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Which is pretty much a complete lie, because the proton-
| proton and Bethe cycles that power the Sun and most stars
| will not be used in a fusion reactor, any time soon.
|
| The fusion reactions that are likely to be used in the first
| fusion reactors are precisely the same as those used in the
| thermonuclear bombs, a.k.a. H-bombs.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| May I ask your views on Thorium reactors ? Is this the next
| step/direction in fission reactors ?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Thorium reactors are a type of breeder reactor that can breed
| using slow neutrons, whereas most breeder reactors built so
| far use uranium and fast neutrons.
|
| There is a lot of hype about thorium online, but almost all
| of it is about breeder reactors vs. non-breeders. None of the
| hype is truly thorium specific.
|
| I wrote up a few pages on it around 2014.
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium.html
|
| Thorium is often associated with fluid fuel reactors.
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html
| ncmncm wrote:
| Thorium costs more.
|
| There are nice vids on YouTube that explain how thorium is no
| fix for what ails nukes.
|
| Ultimately, nukes just cost too much to build and operate.
| They are uncompetitive. Now that we have radically cheaper
| alternatives, we have no desire to engage with the deceitful,
| slipshod, heavily subsidized builders and operators of nukes,
| anymore. Never again.
| rewgs wrote:
| This is one of my favorite comments I've seen on HN. If only
| more people would see this and go bjnovaknodding.gif
| dmead wrote:
| Is it wise to write off safety issues? Chernobyl, Fukushima and
| three mile island all seem pretty bad.
|
| There is also the Robert Heinlein story "Blowups happen". I'm
| just not understanding how this can all be hand waved away.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It's not hand-waving. We've got got what, close to a billion
| fission reactor-hours worth of data? Perhaps more? We know
| exactly how safe they are.
|
| Also: "safety issues?" Useless to talk about safety issues in
| a vacuum. Safety issues compared to _what?_
|
| - Fossil fuels, which are literally guaranteed to fry this
| planet?
|
| - Wind, water, solar? Great but not sufficient and/or
| feasible in all locales.
|
| - An imaginary energy source with zero downsides? Let us know
| once you work out the details.
|
| You point to Fukushima, thanks to which a region was rendered
| uninhabitable. I point to climate change caused by fossil
| fuel, thanks to which large swathes of the planet will soon
| be uninhabitable. I know which one I prefer. I'd prefer ten
| or a hundred Fukushimas in exchange for what's about to
| happen to our planet in the coming decades.
| [deleted]
| socialdemocrat wrote:
| But that safety comes in large parts from strict
| regulations which have made nuclear power very expensive.
| Many seem to live in this alternative reality where we can
| have bit super safe, lightly regulated and cheap nuclear.
|
| I am afraid we can only have one of those attributes.
|
| And figuring out how to build cheap nuclear in the West is
| actually a pretty complex thing. The US cannot even figure
| out why their roads and railroads cost many times that of
| other countries. If they cannot figure that out, then how
| are they going to solve a far trickier problem?
| selectodude wrote:
| > But that safety comes in large parts from strict
| regulations which have made nuclear power very expensive.
|
| Nonsense. The strict regulations are why there have been
| two nuclear starts in the USA since 1978.
| pfdietz wrote:
| What you wrote doesn't contradict what he wrote.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I am afraid we can only have one of those attributes.
|
| While I accept that those two things (safe fission power,
| and cheap fission power) are in obvious tension with each
| other, your "choose only one" scenario is a false
| dichotomy.
|
| A well-functioning, technologically advanced, and
| motivated country could easily overcome this.
| Standardized reactor designs, simplified reactor designs
| such as the newer molten salt reactor designs, etc.
|
| We have the technology to do this safely and cheaper than
| we're doing it now; we just don't have the will.
|
| Also, any talk of cost must include not only the short-
| term kWh cost, but the long term cost -- ie, the terrible
| cost of climate change that we'll soon be paying.
| And figuring out how to build cheap nuclear in
| the West is actually a pretty complex thing
|
| Yeah, no arguments there. The US is no longer capable of
| tackling long term initiatives like this, because any
| change will necessarily upset the corporations that
| effectively own the government.
|
| Nothing will change until the ice caps melt and half our
| coastal cities are flooded, and at that point _something_
| might happen but probably not anything good.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| They were bad, but just bad enough to roll over and give up
| on fission.
|
| While Chernobyl killed people from radiation (around 50, with
| a hotly debated number between 0 and 4000 from long term
| effects), TMI and Fukushima did not. We have only directly
| amd definitively linked about 50 deaths to radiation released
| in commercial fission accidents. It's like a really bad bus
| crash. And that doesnt even count the social and emotional
| costs of fear and evacuation, which are large.
|
| But context matters. Particlates from fossil and biofuel
| cause more death every 7 hours than the high estimate of
| deaths from nuclears entire history (using 4000 in
| chernobyl).
|
| So nuclear fission is very safe. It's not perfectly safe, but
| it is orders of magnitude safer than the average energy
| source. Oh and it is carbon free so it prevents future deaths
| from climate change. So yeah.
| miles wrote:
| > While Chernobyl killed people from radiation (around 50,
| with a hotly debated number between 0 and 4000 from long
| term effects), TMI and Fukushima did not.
|
| Japan confirms first Fukushima worker death from radiation
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45423575
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| That's basically a judge saying it. The scientific basis
| is very unclear.
| miles wrote:
| > That's basically a judge saying it. The scientific
| basis is very unclear.
|
| "In January 2015, the MHLW [Ministry of Health, Labour,
| and Welfare] compiled medical knowledge on lung cancer
| and radiation exposure in a report resulting from a
| review meeting of medical experts, and published the
| immediate view similar to that for thyroid cancer. The
| first claim for case of lung cancer was approved by MHLW
| in August 2018, and this was also the first case
| involving death."
|
| --From "Responses and Actions Taken by the Ministry of
| Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan on Radiation
| Protection at Works Relating to the Accident at TEPCO's
| Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant 9th Edition (Fiscal
| Year of 2021)" https://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/topics/2011
| eq/workers/ri/ar/r...
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I understand that he received an estimated 74 mSv of
| radiation, somewhat below the level of 100 mSv acute /
| 300 mSv annual that has been shown to cause a measurable
| increase risk of cancer (e.g. from 40% lifetime risk to
| 40.1% lifetime risk). It's extremely dubious to say that
| this was definitely from Fukushima radiation. If that
| dose is accurate, the likelihood of it being from
| Fukushima radiation is probably less than 1%. Not
| impossible. But not likely, and far from a sure thing.
|
| For comparison, the 23 firefighters who died from acute
| radiation syndrome at Chernobyl got doses as high as
| 13,400 mSv, almost 2000x higher than this guy.
| 7952 wrote:
| It seems dubious to apply this kind of population
| statistics to individuals at all.
| miles wrote:
| > I understand that he received an estimated 74 mSv of
| radiation
|
| "The ministry said he had been exposed to about 195
| millisieverts (mSv) of radiation. The International
| Commission on Radiological Protection recommends avoiding
| more than 1-20 mSv per year, and according to Reuters,
| exposure to 100 mSv a year is 'the lowest level at which
| any increase in cancer risk is clearly evident.'"
| https://time.com/5388178/japan-first-fukushima-radiation-
| dea...
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| That's 100 mSv acute. Did he get it acutely (i.e. in a
| day or two) or over years? If acute then yes, the
| measurable increment over a background 40% lifetime risk
| could be due to Fukushima. So then the question is what's
| the increment? Let's estimate that it's 1% (based on the
| noisy data at these still quite low doses). In that case,
| there is a 1 in 40 chance that his cancer death in 2016
| was due to Fukushima in 2011.
|
| It it wasn't acute and accumulated over >1 year, then
| there's a ~0% chance it was from Fukushima radiation.
| markvdb wrote:
| > They were bad, but just bad enough to roll over and give
| up on fission.
|
| Competent engineers are perfectly capable of maintaining a
| nuclear reactor, _technically_ speaking.
|
| Large projects are vulnerable to all vices of human nature
| though. Idiots in manglement. Greedy people trying to
| squeeze out more profit. Terrorists. Maffiosi, whether
| running a country or not. Let's not forget that scale is
| not just about money or spatial dimensions, but also
| time...
|
| We have a perfect example: Enerhodar, Ukraine. A working
| nuclear power plant is in the middle of a war zone right
| now.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| You keep bringing up climate change, like the only
| alternative is coal. Do you really think that nuclear
| fission can be a key player in reducing emissions to net
| zero? It seems far too expensive and slow to set up for
| something this urgent.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Fossil + biofuel makes 80% of our energy today. Getting
| rid of that will require vast amounts of zero-carbon
| energy. Wind and solar need to be built out at breakneck
| speed if we want to be serious. Much faster than what
| we're doing now. So does nuclear fission.
|
| I assume you're only looking at the slow and expensive
| nuclear builds?
|
| China is looking to build 150 new reactors to meet its
| goals.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-11-03/china-
| is-pl...
|
| We also have ways of making nuclear reactors extremely
| quickly if we want to get really serious. In the 1970s we
| started building a facility in Jacksonville Fl capable of
| delivering 4 large LWRs per year in a shipyard-like
| factory. The reactors were to be floated off to their
| sites (the first of which were offshore). They installed
| the world's largest gantry crane at the facility. Sadly
| the oil shocks reduced the energy demand where their
| first customers were (New Jersey refineries) and the
| effort failed after they received a construction license
| from the nuclear regulatory commission. Building zero
| carbon power plant gigafactories like this can solve
| climate change, you betcha.
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-01-26-offshore-power-
| sys...
| 7952 wrote:
| Whatever source we use it needs to be built out at
| breakneck speed. It just seems that wind, solar, and
| batteries are more amenable to that than nuclear in a
| basic logistical sense. All of the ways people suggest to
| make nuclear faster and cheaper already exist in those
| fields.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| By expensive, I mean in $/kWh - yes we could build enough
| nuclear power plants to stop carbon emissions, but if the
| cost of energy is multiple times greater than that of
| renewables, why not invest in those instead?
|
| I've heard this idea that we should "do everything", but
| I don't get that, why don't we do the best thing as well
| and as fast as we can?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| > but if the cost of energy is multiple times greater
| than that of renewables, why not invest in those instead?
|
| First of all, we are investing more in renewables right
| now than nuclear. Much much more.
|
| Second of all, your statement is true for LCOE, but LCOE
| is an inappropriate metric for systems costs. It does not
| include the cost of storage, additional transmission
| lines to reach thousands of distributed wind/solar sites,
| extra capacity to fill up the storage, the required smart
| grid tech, etc.
|
| Quoting just LCOE is becoming extremely problematic.
| Everyone does it, and it's very misleading.
|
| Details of why it's best to also invest in nuclear from a
| full systems perspective are published and peer reviewed
| here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006
| joak wrote:
| Exactly, if you build a coal power plant today, the LCOE
| is calculated assuming the facility will run, let's say,
| for 30 years at 80% capacity.
|
| But what happens if you have to stop your power plant in
| ten years because its (LCOE-estimated) cost is not
| competitive anymore?
|
| So based on an biased LCOE computation, you sold your
| coal-based kWh at a third of it's real cost. Bad for the
| investor, bad for the climate.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| Yeah but we shouldn't be comparing to coal - I already
| said this.
| pfdietz wrote:
| From the viewpoint of a utility, what matters is not large
| accidents (because their liability is capped) but rather
| smaller accidents that could ruin their investment. The TMI
| accident didn't kill anyone, but it gravely damaged the owner
| of the power plant, as they had just lost a large investment.
|
| Because of this, fusion is likely WORSE from the utility's
| point of view than fission. While fusion reactors are less
| likely to have catastrophic accidents with large external
| effects, they are probably more likely to have localized
| accidents that ruin the reactor. In any case, a fusion
| reactor will have to be designed to be extremely reliable
| because repairing it after any accident will be so difficult,
| as it will be too radioactive for anyone to get in to repair
| it. All repairs will have to be done remotely.
| freemint wrote:
| What accident do you foresee that makes components of a
| fusion reactor sufficiently radio active?
|
| Containment field failure should leave the components just
| as radio active as a controlled shutdown as the plasma
| distinguishes immediately or am i missing something?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Neutron bombardment will make the innards of the fusion
| reactor radioactive as part of its normal operation. No
| accident is required. The induced radioactivity will be
| so high that hands on access will be impossible, even
| with the reactor shut down. This will make maintenance
| difficult.
|
| Maybe the next big VC fad after fusion will be radiation
| resistant robots.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Everything in the reactor is blasted with enormous
| neutron flux, inducing radioactivity in everything.
|
| A thousand tons of molten, radioactive lithium could
| easily ruin your day, if ever exposed to air.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| Also hand waving away the fact that the waste products have
| to be managed for civilisation-length time scales.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Deep geologic repositories have a scientific consensus as
| being safe and appropriate solutions to high level nuclear
| waste. Finland's Onkalo is mostly constructed and finishing
| up licensing right now. It's a solved problem.
|
| https://posiva.fi/en/
|
| Number of deaths from stored commercial nuclear waste
| worldwide? zero.
|
| People always ask: "what about the waste?"
|
| Nowadays we answer: "What about it?"
|
| Air pollution and climate change are vastly more serious
| and challenging problems than the storage of high-level
| nuclear waste.
|
| There was just a huge twitter thread related to this with
| like 33k RTs and over 100k likes:
| https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856
| dmitriid wrote:
| The total amount of waste fuel produced by all of humanity
| since nuclear power became a thing is magnitudes less than
| the waste produced by solar panels and wind turbines that
| will need to be decommissioned due to age (some of them
| already in the near future)
| DennisP wrote:
| Only if we never use fast reactors, which fission almost
| all the long-lived stuff. Take what's left, encase it in
| glass and bury it, and it'll be back to the radioactivity
| of the original ore in 300 years.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Well, except for the 7 long lived fission products. Those
| are possibly good targets for space disposal.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| You can separate them out and transmute them in fast
| reactors as well.
|
| https://www.iaea.org/publications/7112/implications-of-
| parti...
| pfdietz wrote:
| I suspect space disposal would be much cheaper.
| DennisP wrote:
| Sure, the overall mix goes back to the radioactivity of
| the original ore, not a radioactivity of zero.
| zigzag312 wrote:
| Is there any progress in design of nuclear fission power plants
| regarding safety?
|
| Fukushima was build in the 70s, so it might have been a bit
| outdated (as a layman I have no idea). Was there any
| significant progress in design of nuclear power plants since
| then? Can they be shut down more quickly and reliably?
|
| Given enough R&D, could safety of nuclear fission power plants
| be improved further or is that very unlikely?
| madacol wrote:
| Is there a good estimate / measure of the safety problems of
| fukushima?
|
| In wikipedia it says that only 1 person has died from cancer,
| while >2000 died from the evacuation itself
|
| It seems that being less aggressive with evacuations and
| letting some people be exposed to radiation would have
| actually save more lives
|
| Though maybe that's only in hindsight?. Maybe at the time
| there was a considerable risk of something terrible but
| didn't happen?
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Is there any progress in design of nuclear fission power
| plants regarding safety?
|
| > Fukushima...
|
| You mean, hit by the most powerful earthquake recorded in
| Japan, flooded by a tsunami with 13-14 meter-high waves,
| evacuated, failed to shutdown, had three core meltdowns and
| several explosions, and resulted in... 1 death from
| radiation, 2000 deaths from evacuation and 45 radiation-
| resulted injuries.
|
| I'd say even this outdated design was very, very, _very_
| safe.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > 1 death from radiation
|
| So far. The population dose will likely cause many more
| fatal cancers than that (maybe 200?). That those will be
| impossible to detect above the normal cancer background
| doesn't mean we can pretend they aren't there.
| zigzag312 wrote:
| Our seismological record-keeping is still very young so,
| most powerful in recorded history of Japan sounds more
| impressive that it probably is.
|
| I know that current statistics regarding nuclear power
| safety are very good. The reason I am asking is because I
| often see comparisons between latest or even future
| renewables technology and decades old nuclear and I am
| wondering if progress on nuclear has already
| peaked/stalled.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > It's way easier.
|
| Is that why power plants go years over time and hugely over-
| budget?
|
| > It has been working fine since the 1950s.
|
| Oh, yeah, just fine, not a hitch:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_accident...
|
| > Waste problem is solved
|
| The solution being: Ignore it, I guess?
|
| > net saves millions of lives by displacing air pollution
|
| And we fight wars for peace too.
|
| > It's zero carbon
|
| Not if you count the mining aspect. But even if you didn't:
| Wind and solar are now 3 times cheaper or more, and take a lot
| less time to set up. The power output stability benefit is
| wearing thin.
| GoodbyeMrChips wrote:
| mwint wrote:
| Waste problem - drive through the US state of Nevada. There's
| nothing for hundreds of miles. You could likely just throw
| the waste out of an airplane over Nevada and be more or less
| fine.
|
| With containment techniques combined with the ridiculous
| amount of uninhabited desert the US has, this is a non issue.
| freetime2 wrote:
| They already tried this in Nevada and failed for political
| reasons [1]. Dumping nuclear waste in the desert may be a
| non issue to you (and to me as well), but to a lot of
| people - particularly people who actually live in Nevada -
| it is a very serious issue.
|
| The question of how to dispose of nuclear waste - in a
| manner that is satisfying to the residents of the state
| where it is being disposed - remains an unsolved issue in
| the US. And the current policy _is_ to basically just
| ignore the waste. It's being stored for the time being at
| reactor sites in steel and concrete casks - which I don't
| think anyone would argue is a sufficient solution.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_
| waste...
| pfdietz wrote:
| The reason Yucca Mountain sputtered out was that it
| wasn't really needed. It's cheaper to just put the spent
| fuel in dry casks for a few centuries, even if the stuff
| is then buried (or reprocessed, or shot into space).
| Given there was no $$ incentive to make YM work, any
| amount of opposition could stop it.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| > political problem
|
| But that was the problem with Yucca - it was chosen
| _exclusively_ for its "scientific" value - remoteness.
| They didn't event take transportation costs into account.
|
| If you start with the political aspects, it becomes
| really, really easy to solve.
|
| How many towns and cities are there with plants shutting
| down? How many with a history of military and nuclear
| facilities?
|
| I know one town in particular that is trying to
| specialize in nuclear work. They have consultants,
| training programs, etc. Why not call them?
| godelski wrote:
| It failed for more than political reasons. Long term
| repositories are pretty complex and have extremely unique
| problems to resolve (such as communicating with
| intelligent lifeforms that may not recognize our danger
| symbols). Just see all that went into the long term seed
| storage buildings. But really, we've learned enough in
| the last (almost) century to learn that we probably don't
| need long term repositories.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| All you're saying here is, "people object to it." Or is
| there something more substantive?
|
| > in a manner that is satisfying to the residents of the
| state where it is being disposed
|
| No, that is basically NIMBY. Of course some residents
| won't like nuclear waste buried underground, 100 miles
| from them in a place they'll never go and where no one
| lives. I don't know how to not sound callous about that.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Yes I am basically saying people object to it. And in a
| democracy that's a fairly important detail that you can't
| just write off as a "non issue".
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| Many people also hate renewable energy for ideological
| reasons. People can be persuaded, or, in a democracy,
| simply outvoted by a critical mass of supporters. Nuclear
| power has been losing the propaganda war for decades in
| the United States, but that's not a reason to give up on
| it forever.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > Yes I am basically saying people object to it. And in a
| democracy that's a fairly important detail that you can't
| just write off as a "non issue".
|
| We do this all the time.
|
| People object to living next to the airport. They object
| to new roads. They object to schools being built, rail
| lines, bus stops, even hospitals.
|
| Yet, we weigh the pros for society against the cons for
| specific people. That's why we have a country with any
| infrastructure. If we simply gave in whenever someone
| said no, we would all be dead in an empty field.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| So France isn't a democracy? In a democracy, minorities
| have rights, but they don't have an infinite veto.
|
| As someone else says, "People object to living next to
| the airport. They object to new roads. They object to
| schools being built, rail lines, bus stops, even
| hospitals."
|
| Where I live, the old Orchard Supply store is being
| turned into a Costco. There are people objecting to that,
| too.
| RajT88 wrote:
| While you may think it unfair to compare, the 3 coal
| slurry spills (from power plants) which happened in the
| US to date had ranges of impact on the order of hundreds
| of miles and included impacts to drinking water.
|
| I have little doubt the NIMBY's are recalling one or more
| of these incidents.
|
| And this is just limiting the scope to power plant
| related waste. If you talk about industry in general you
| have many decades of weird cancers and nonpotable tap
| water in various parts of the country. The lack of trust
| comes from precedent.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The oil business deals with NIMBYs by making it worth
| their while. If oils is found on your land, you get lots
| of cash. "Beverly Hillbilly's".
|
| Treat nuclear the same way. Don't ask towns to host
| nuclear facilities out of the goodness of their hearts.
| Make it worth their while.
|
| If nuclear power starts raising real estate value, the
| NIMBYs shut up.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Treat nuclear the same way. Don't ask towns to host
| nuclear facilities out of the goodness of their hearts.
| Make it worth their while.
|
| The nuclear industry doesn't generate the money for that
| kind of lubrication; they demand more subsidies and
| immunities than they already have to build anything as it
| is.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The Department of Defense doesn't generate cash, but
| people love having those bases nearby.
| geysersam wrote:
| Thousands of salaries is cash.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That's a cost to the DoD. The point was that government
| can easily subsidize nuclear waste storage, just as it
| subsidizes the military.
| nine_k wrote:
| France, with much less uninhabited land, and vastly more
| nuclear power plants, somehow manages to place waste in a
| way that's acceptable for an EU country, and neighboring
| countries.
|
| (But of course "waste" is not really waste, it's fuel spent
| for a few per cent; a breeder reactor + reprocessing should
| burn it again and again and again.)
| cyanydeez wrote:
| >After decades of cooling, France, like most other
| nuclear power generating countries, has no long-term
| solution in place for high and intermediate spent fuel
| waste disposal.
|
| https://www.power-technology.com/analysis/managing-
| nuclear-w...
|
| Yes, short term they manage it.
|
| When we are discussing the future, our concern is long
| term.
| danaris wrote:
| When we are discussing climate change, our concern is
| _not_ long term.
|
| If we could build the nuclear reactors _now_ , keep the
| spent fuel (whether or not we're going to reuse it in
| breeder reactors) as safe as we know how, and solve the
| long-term problem later, then we'd have a much better
| chance of there _being_ a later to worry about.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| The long term plan is to reprocess it, which is why we
| need to keep it around in the meantime. If we just wanted
| to get rid of it that would be trivially easy. But we
| don't want that because we know in future we're going to
| want to get it back from wherever we put it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| They've given up on fast reactors. Reprocessing with
| thermal reactors doesn't actually solve the problem, as
| MOX fuel cannot then be further reprocessed and used in
| thermal reactors again. You still end up with all the
| fission products, and now the higher actinides from spent
| MOX, to deal with.
|
| Having said that, dry casks are a perfectly cromulent way
| to deal with spent fuel.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| The main motivation to not reprocess fuel was nuclear
| nonproliferation, because it frees up the plutonium for
| nuclear weapons. But on the off chance that governments
| ever want to build a giant pile of nuclear weapons it's
| sensible to not get rid of the nuclear waste, since if it
| ever turns out you do want it again it's very expensive
| and time consuming to produce. Since you've already gone
| to all of the effort of mining the uranium and producing
| a bunch of plutonium, best to just keep it around
| somewhere in case you ever do want it for some reason.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I'd say the main motivation to not reprocess is that it
| costs more than not reprocessing. It's a net economic
| loss.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| > > It's way easier.
|
| > Is that why power plants go years over time and hugely
| over-budget?
|
| 'Late and over-budget' sounds easier than 'has never been
| demonstrated'.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Groan here we go again.
|
| > Oh, yeah, just fine, not a hitch:
|
| Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year
| from air pollution.
|
| https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution
|
| > The solution being: Ignore it, I guess?
|
| I mentioned the solutions but didn't provide a link. here you
| go.
|
| https://www.posiva.fi/en/index.html
|
| > And we fight wars for peace too.
|
| See the literature
| https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/kh05000e.html
|
| > Not if you count the mining aspect.
|
| Nuclear has rock bottom full lifecycle carbon emissions of 12
| gCO2-eq/kWh, including mining. C.f. 11 for wind, 40 for
| solar, 490 for gas, 800+ for coal. Hard to beat.
|
| > Wind and solar are now 3 times cheaper or more
|
| You're comparing the worst US nuclear builds with wind/solar
| without storage, transmission, overbuilds needed for storage,
| etc. LCOE is not an appropriate metric for systems costs.
| Never was. Lazard are a bunch of kooks. Look at Hualong One
| costs.
|
| Details on cost comparison for deeply decarbonized grid here:
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006
| jmyeet wrote:
| > Groan here we go again.
|
| Yeah, we do with more pro-nuclear propaganda and outright
| falsehoods (again).
|
| > Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year
| from air pollution.
|
| No, it doesn't. Here's the exact quote from your source:
|
| > The combined effects of ambient air pollution and
| household air pollution is associated with 7 million
| premature deaths annually.
|
| Not "die from" but "is associated with". What does that
| mean? "Associated with" here means "reduces the life
| expectancy", basically. That's a far cry from "dies from".
| The primary relationship with mortality seems to come from
| particulates. Some of these are natural (eg sand in
| deserts), some of it isn't (eg cooking fires). It also
| includes motor vehicle exhausts.
|
| To give you a sense of the level of bullshit going on here,
| other conditions are getting attributed to air pollution
| [1]:
|
| > They linked nine causes of death with the pollution:
| cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic
| kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
| dementia, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, lung cancer and
| pneumonia.
|
| One study estimates 100,000 Americans die every year from
| air pollution [2]. That just doesn't pass the smell test
| and shows you what's going on: it's attributing air
| pollution to certain medical conditions and then counting
| deaths from those conditions are air pollution deaths.
|
| Exaggerations and outright lies do your cause a massive
| disservice.
|
| Pro-nuclear propaganda doesn't address these issues:
|
| 1. Not a single nuclear power plant has been built without
| significant government subsidies;
|
| 2. Nuclear power plant falsely reduce costs by
| externalizing significant costs such as the processing of
| fuel, the processing of fuel processing waste, maintenance,
| inspection (eg by the NRC), switching out fuel, processing
| nuclear fuel, the time-to-build or the failure modes of
| nuclear plants. Lest we forget, the Chernobyl Absolute
| Exclusion Zone is 1,000 square miles 35 years later.
|
| If these next-generation LWRs are so economical, why isn't
| someone building them at scale? The standard response is
| political opposition but what about China?
|
| I swear nuclear fan boys are just as delusional as climate
| deniers.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/20/us-
| air-p...
|
| [2]: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-
| news/articles/2019-04-0...
| modriano wrote:
| 8 million deaths annually from air pollution is pretty
| well supported by a number of methodologically sound
| studies, with anthropogenic air pollution being
| responsible for more than half of all air pollution
| deaths [0].
|
| We let the US nuclear construction industry die, so it's
| pretty expensive to rebuild a workforce with the skills
| to build new nuclear plants, and that has contributed to
| the cost of nuclear power rising above some other power
| sources [1], but that's only because the cost of CO2
| pollution isn't accounted for, which is a massive subsidy
| for fossil fuel power producers.
|
| [0] https://ourworldindata.org/data-review-air-pollution-
| deaths
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_ele
| ctricit...
| indymike wrote:
| > I swear nuclear fan boys are just as delusional as
| climate deniers.
|
| No, some of us actually have operated a reactor for a
| living, and have first hand experience with the
| technology, and most of the issues people like to
| discuss. In my case, I served in the US Navy in nuclear
| propulsion. This whole debate seems crazy. Truth is the
| tech works, and it should be inexpensive compared to
| burning fossil fuels. Then there is the absolutely
| incredible difference in energy density - a two 13mmx13mm
| fuel pellets contains roughly the same energy as 1 ton of
| coal, or 260 gallons of oil. As far as renewables go, it
| has to be much worse for the world to build the 1650 wind
| turbines, wire them, and so on that it takes to match a
| typical single civilian reactor. To those of us who have
| worked with the technology, we know it could really
| change the world's carbon problem.
|
| The reason the cost is so high - and remember, the cost
| of technology usually goes down over time in a normal
| functioning market, is hyper-regulation at every level of
| government. From mining and refining fuel to building
| plants to operating them, there is an insane amount of
| regulation and litigation over that regulation. The over-
| regulation argument is really annoying, mostly because it
| is true.
|
| It's also true that there are some issues around dealing
| with waste. Most of these are easily solved, but will not
| be for the same over-regulation reasons. We've taken
| perfectly good tech and through the power of bureaucracy,
| made it unworkable.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > In my case, I served in the US Navy in nuclear
| propulsion.
|
| Ah, the US military, famous for building and operating
| things at low cost.
|
| > Truth is the tech works
|
| Nuclear propulsion works because it has the US military
| to secure it but more importantly, a carrier or a
| submarine benefits from not carrying fuel in a way that
| has nothing to do with economics. You power a submarine
| with nuclear simply because there's no other way for such
| a submarine to spend months at sea without refueling.
|
| You say the tech works. OK, but so what? That has almost
| nothing to do with anything. In fact you're extrapolating
| the military use case for using nuclear energy for
| propulsion and saying we should extend that to civilian
| commercial power generation.
|
| As for the rest about over-regulation, the first point is
| that you have to deal with the political and legal
| reality. But really it's a smoke screen because
| proponents of nuclear power like to talk about operating
| costs while ignoring capital expenditure (which is
| _massive_ ). From a total cost per kWh over the lifetime
| of a nuclear power plant, it's not really that cheap.
| upwardbound wrote:
| I think you're being pretty quick to write off a subject
| matter expert on a topic that is their own field of
| expertise.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Their field involved exactly zero need for economic
| analysis.
|
| Naval reactor "engineering laboratory technicians"
| (SMAGs) are reputed among submariners as habitual liars.
| Strange but true.
| indymike wrote:
| > Their field involved exactly zero need for economic
| analysis.
|
| This is just dismissing the argument without addressing
| the assertion that the vast majority of cost in building
| nuclear is imposed by overly burdensome regulation.
|
| > Naval reactor "engineering laboratory technicians"
| (SMAGs) are reputed among submariners as habitual liars.
|
| From personal experience, ELTs were held to the exact
| same zero tolerance for lies standard I was. If you were
| caught by anyone lying you were out. Rank didn't even
| mater, nor did it matter if they were nukes or not. If
| you lied and it was caught, nuclear career over. I
| watched many people end their careers over how many push-
| ups they completed in a fitness test, covering for a
| buddy who was out with a girl when they shouldn't have
| been, lying about getting a tattoo, or even lying about
| what they ate for lunch. It was absolutely brutal.
| indymike wrote:
| > As for the rest about over-regulation, the first point
| is that you have to deal with the political and legal
| reality.
|
| Reality: regulatory compliance is the bulk of the cost.
| godelski wrote:
| > I swear nuclear fan boys are just as delusional as
| climate deniers.
|
| Just an FYI, acidburn is a reactor scientist. It feels a
| bit silly to call them a "fanboy". Also, I can verify
| they care deeply about climate change.
|
| I'm also not personally actually aware of any nuclear fan
| boys or scientists that are climate deniers. They just
| argue "nuclear + renewables" vs "renewables". Why's that
| so hard to get? They aren't arguing for coal, oil, or
| natural gas like climate deniers do.
| blubbi wrote:
| "As of June 2021, China has a total nuclear power
| generation capacity of 49.6 GW from 50 reactors, with
| additional 17.1 GW under construction" (1)
|
| Fair enough, I have not checked whether those are the
| previously mentioned lwrs, but I would argue that those
| numbers are definitely "scale"
|
| (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
| mathlover2 wrote:
| > One study estimates 100,000 Americans die every year
| from air pollution
|
| That's still a lot more deaths than commercial nuclear
| fusion has been associated with in the US. It's also,
| incidentally, a _lot_ of deaths.
|
| > 1. Not a single nuclear power plant has been built
| without significant government subsidies.
|
| This is a non-sequitur. Just because something needs
| government subsidies doesn't make it bad. Things like the
| Internet, modern solar energy, and the USPS were built
| with either massive initial subsidies or even complete
| government involvement throughout their ongoing
| lifetimes. That doesn't make them bad.
|
| > 2. Nuclear power plant falsely reduce costs by
| externalizing significant costs such as the processing of
| fuel, the processing of fuel processing waste,
| maintenance, inspection (eg by the NRC), switching out
| fuel, processing nuclear fuel, the time-to-build or the
| failure modes of nuclear plants. Lest we forget, the
| Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone is 1,000 square miles
| 35 years later.
|
| Versus coal and oil plants, which externalize the costs
| of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Also,
| comparing a shoddily built and designed Soviet plant to
| modern Western ones isn't a good comparison.
|
| > If these next-generation LWRs are so economical, why
| isn't someone building them at scale? The standard
| response is political opposition but what about China?
|
| In the West, it's negative perception that largely
| predates widespread public awareness of climate change.
| As for China, it looks like China's getting in on the
| nuclear game too, precisely because of air pollution
| concerns. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-
| library/country-pr...
|
| > delusional as climate deniers
|
| Yeah, no. Even if us supporters of nuclear power are
| wrong, we don't need to be compared to people who are on
| the level of flat earthers.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > That's still a lot more deaths than commercial nuclear
| fusion
|
| You missed the point about how this is a completley made
| up number and even if it wasn't, nuclear power plants (vs
| emissions from burning fossil fuels) would only address a
| small portion of deaths anyway.
|
| > Just because something needs government subsidies
| doesn't make it bad.
|
| No one said bad. Try "uneconomical".
|
| > Also, comparing a shoddily built and designed Soviet
| plant to modern Western ones isn't a good comparison.
|
| Ah yes, nuclear proponents love to exclude Chernobyl as
| an outlier because they have no answer for it. In this
| case, it was a "shoddily built and designed Soviet
| plant".
|
| So anyone who pays attention to regulation in the United
| States (and elsewhere) should be aware of the "revoling
| door", which is also called "regulatory capture". This is
| where in a given regulated industry (eg oil and gas,
| pharmaceuticals) people will work for the regulator then
| private industry then the regulator and so on to the
| point where that regulation becomes ineffective.
|
| We see another clear example of the Appeals Court for the
| Federal Circuit being staffed by all ex-patent lawyers
| who weirdly pretty much side with patent holders every
| time.
|
| Part of the problem with nuclear is the human component.
| It's easy to ignore maintenance in the interests of
| profit. The natural tendency will be for the revolving
| door to weaken regulation.
|
| So you want to dismiss Chernobyl as being "shoddily
| built" (and likely poorly maintained) but that's exactly
| what would happen with nuclear power regulation.
|
| How about a non-Soviet disaster: Fukushima. What will be
| the reason to dismiss that one? Earthquakes? One in a
| million natural disaster? Some other reason to exclude
| another inconvenience?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Lest we forget, the Chernobyl Absolute Exclusion Zone
| is 1,000 square miles 35 years later.
|
| Ah yes, the Soviet reactor that was built with a known
| fatal design flaw, then operated well outside of safety
| parameters during an experiment, is the be-all end-all of
| nuclear safety.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Now show me list of the 8 million people who die per year
| from air pollution.
|
| Are you comparing to coal-fired plants? I'm talking about
| solar and wind.
|
| As for fossil fuels, the expected deaths and environmental
| from nuclear accidents are - well, TBH, I don't know the
| math for that, but I would expect it would be on the order
| of magnitude of the extra deaths from fossil fuel
| electricity generation.
|
| > I mentioned the solutions
|
| I will actually look into that. However, the website says:
| "Finland ... No other country has yet reached the
| implementation phase of final disposal. ... final disposal
| of high-level spent nuclear fuel has not yet been launched
| anywhere."
|
| So, that's not what's being used so far. This company's new
| approach - maybe it's great, I don't know, but it needs to
| last thousands of years, right? That's a very high bar -
| and a significant maintenance and hazard-management burden
| going forward.
|
| > Lazard are a bunch of kooks.
|
| That's a pretty strong claim. But - since I'm not an
| expert, I can't outright dismiss it. They're a popular
| source for a "bunch of kooks"... care to elaborate?
|
| > Look at Hualong One costs.
|
| I would look into them, if I could.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _The solution being: Ignore it, I guess?_
|
| The waste is completely solid and can be safely buried and
| forgotten. Is that ignorance?
| jcranmer wrote:
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_acciden
| t...
|
| How many industries are there where the list of notable
| accidents has such few fatalities? I mean, have you actually
| _looked_ at the accidents on that list? The vast majority of
| them are basically garden-variety industrial accidents--and
| there 's only so many because people are minded to
| exhaustively list every mishap that occurs at a nuclear power
| plant in a way that they're not for, say, a coal power plant.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Well, Chernobyl will likely end up killing about as many
| people as have ever died in a commercial jet crash.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Fission reactors can be easier than fusion reactors, and
| still go over time and hugely over budget. This just means
| fusion reactors are likely to also go over time and budget.
| AughFuckFusion wrote:
| > I'm a professional fission guy. I started out in fusion and
| switched to advanced fission. These days I don't see why we
| don't just build lots more regular old LWR fission reactors.
|
| Well, a comment posting without financials pretty much
| underlines why more fission reactors don't get built: the
| nuclear community is insanely bad at pitching to investors
| without magic on the line. Unfortunately, investors in our
| society are the closest things we get to planners so we're
| pretty fucked.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| If you add district heating to LWRs their effective
| efficiency goes from 33% to over 57%. If we adjust markets to
| value on-demand (including nights/weekends/winters) low-
| carbon heat and electricity, LWR economics would be good,
| even in the USA.
|
| They're already expected to be essential for decarbonizing at
| scale.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511.
| ..
|
| I have plenty of rants about how LCOE is wholly inappropriate
| as a metric of overall decarbonized system costs. If you look
| from that perspective, LWRs built by Koreans, Chinese,
| Indians, or Russians are an incredible deal.
|
| We just need to have the Koreans come over and re-teach us
| how to build reactors. It's beautifully symmetric because we
| originally taught them. They've perfected the knowledge,
| enhanced it, saved it, and can now teach us.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| That is probably a good idea, but comes with the major
| political problem of putting nuclear reactors very close to
| large populations of people who can complain about the
| zoning.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| 100 km isn't that close.
|
| https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/ndd/workshops/nucogen/presentations...
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Wow, point retracted. I'm honestly kind of shocked that
| heat can be transferred that efficiently.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| This is a solvable problem if there's political will to solve
| it.
|
| Much of the uncertainty and cost of a new fission plant is
| tied to regulatory, permitting and litigation costs. No one's
| suggesting eliminating regulation, but the near-limitless
| ability to hold up a project with specious lawsuits could be
| curtailed.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| *These days I don't see why we don't just build lots more
| regular old LWR fission reactors.*
|
| Because they lose money. Nobody, not the USA, Russia, China,
| France, Japan, Korea has ever made them profitable. They are
| always subsidized. The CCP bought Westinghouse AP1000s so they
| could steal their design and they still couldn't make it work.
| And you can't blame the environmentalists when it's in China.
|
| Full disclosure: I'm not an accountant, but since I started
| taking an interest in this subject several years ago I've
| learned about wishing away decomissioning costs by claiming the
| plants will last 60 or 100 years. Ask the taxpayers of Oregon
| what 'stranded costs' are. Making 150 square km of Japan
| uninhabitable is also a bit spendy. IIRC almost all of the Dept
| of Energy's budget goes to nuclear.
|
| But, nothing will change because military nuclear is a national
| security issue and that always trumps every other issue.
|
| Back to fusion: Fusion power plants will be at least as big and
| complicated as fission plants, so it's never going to be 'too
| cheap to meter' electricity. I do hold out hope for it to be a
| drive for space craft though.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > Because they lose money, nobody has ever made them
| profitable ....They are always subsidized
|
| That's how it appears but that's not an argument against
| them. Two things: firstly they are _regulated_ because
| nuclear fuel can be used for warfare, so when a government
| gets involved things cost more, that 's just an unfortunate
| fact, secondly they've never been commercialised.
|
| Could you imagine if cars or jumbo jets were built ad-hoc?
| What would the profit or loss be? A better example, perhaps,
| is Space X vs NASA. How much does a NASA rocket cost
| (government controlled), versus Space X (private industry)
| that has had to industrialise a process? And how much profit
| does NASA make per launch versus Space X?
|
| Nuclear power stations _could_ be industrialised and would
| definitely be cheaper.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Cost for deeply decarbonized grids are cheapest if you have
| low carbon firm energy like nuclear. The LCOE numbers thrown
| around today are meaningless wrt systems costs.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511.
| ..
|
| nuclear plants save a fraction of their revenue in a trust
| that pays for decommissioning. for thr vast majority of
| plants this has been and will be more than sufficient. therr
| are exceptions but it isnt fair to dwell on them given the
| other successess.
|
| The dose rates are barely above background already in most of
| the area around Fukushima. I'm with Elon in that I will
| gladly eat vegetebles from slightly elevated dose areas
| because I belive the science that says damger starts at 100
| mSv acute/300 mSv annual. Getting an extra 40 mSv in a year
| is not uninhabitable.
|
| civilian nuclear power has pretty much nothing to do with
| military nuclear so not sure I follow your point there.
|
| And for the record, here's the full Too Cheap To Meter quote,
| from a Science Writers Dinner in 1954:
|
| "It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in
| their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter, will know
| of great periodic regional famines in the world only as
| matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas
| and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger
| and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far
| longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to
| understand what causes him to age"
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible for
| fusion to generate a nuclear meltdown scenario that fission has
| the potential for?
| dongobongo wrote:
| Meltdown accident: basically, reactor is turned off, however
| heat continues to be generated because of a thing called
| decay heat which is when isotopes generated by the fission
| reactions decay to more stable isotopes and release energy.
| It's about 7% of a fission reactor's power and continues for
| a few hours until it's negligible. 7% of a gigawatt reactor
| is like having a couple of jet engines going full blast
| inside the core. This heat has to be removed, and meltdowns
| happen when people fail to do so - basically pumps break,
| coolant leaks, or coolant is blocked from cooling down the
| core. Recent micro reactors get around this because they
| don't need active coolant or people to cool down the reactor
| - they just cool off by conduction or simple heat rejection
| systems. I read recently that fusion reactor will also
| generate decay heat from all the activated components and
| this is comparable to a fission reactor. The difference is
| there's a lot less radioactive crap in a fusion reactor - but
| the fusion reactor will still meltdown and they are
| expensive...
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| If there's truly no meltdown risk with micro reactors, I'm
| all for it.
|
| In terms of fusion, I'd much rather make the tradeoff of
| increased cost in order to remove issues of vulnerability
| completely. I want to be able to not even have to think
| about / plan for dealing with a meltdown scenario.
| lven wrote:
| This is it: https://usnc.com/mmr/
|
| I work on it.
| mlindner wrote:
| > I read recently that fusion reactor will also generate
| decay heat from all the activated components and this is
| comparable to a fission reactor.
|
| I'd like to know where you read that as the entire idea is
| to build a reactor out of things that don't activate or are
| very hard to activate. i.e. things that thermalize or
| reflect neutrons.
|
| Fission reactors produce tons of neutrons too (they kind of
| have to to work more so than fusion even) and that doesn't
| leave the containment vessel anywhere near as radioactive
| as the nuclear waste itself.
| lven wrote:
| I think they are talking about me.
|
| Here's two papers about decay heat in ITER: https://www.s
| ciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/092037..., and h
| ttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920379
| 61...
|
| I used their data to find power density and compared it
| the micro modular fission (MMR) fission reactors.
|
| "MMR has a lower decay heat power density than fusion
| systems like SPARC or ARC, DEMO, or ITER and orders of
| magnitude lower than other advanced fission reactors as
| show in the figure below. UNSC's MMR has the lowest decay
| heat power density at 0.075 W/cm3, less than DEMO's 0.083
| W/cm3 in the blanket and divertor. A lower decay heat is
| more manageable by passive cooling systems, allowing the
| reactor to dissipate heat more easily and without
| damaging the reactor. The other aspect to consider is the
| maximum temperatures that can be safely maintained in the
| reactor. Gas-cooled reactors like the MMR have all-
| ceramic cores that can withstand much higher temperatures
| than a fusion's reactors metals, molten salts, and
| magnets. MMR's low power density is a paradigm shift in
| nuclear safety, more foundational than fusion, for it can
| be accomplished cost effectively today."
| ncmncm wrote:
| A fusion reactor would have at least a thousand tons of
| molten lithium coursing through miles of plumbing, that if
| breached explodes and burns uncontrollably; and the reaction
| product dissolves mucus membranes.
|
| Fortunately none will be built.
| baxtr wrote:
| Fusion is just around the corner! Just 20 years away!
| unchocked wrote:
| Fuckin' A... I don't have a charitable explanation for why
| folks are holding their breath for another neutron source,
| while the world burns.
| ncmncm wrote:
| We don't actually need or want extra neutrons. We have all
| the neutrons we will ever want, right where they already are.
|
| Protons will become increasingly valuable, after being
| separated from oxygen.
| paulcole wrote:
| The reality is that there is no charitable explanation. On a
| global scale, society doesn't care about what the world is
| like and what humanity will have to deal with 100, 200, or
| 500 years from now. We care about things like finding our
| next meal or finding our next Amazon package on our doorstep.
| DrBazza wrote:
| The nuclear waste 'problem' annoys me because it's absurd in
| comparison to everything else.
|
| I challenge anyone to go onto google right and give me a firm
| number of people that have died from nuclear waste, not just
| nuclear accidents.
|
| I'll start -
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_...
|
| about 200 for all nuclear accidents. Waste itself? Zero? Which
| is less than people that have fallen down the stairs, tripped
| over a cat, or choked on a pizza.
|
| Now search for deaths to humans (and wildlife for that matter)
| from fossil fuel pollution, oil spills, gas pipeline explosions
| and so on.
|
| As I've said before if we bury it in a mine, and lose the
| ability to read that it's down there and dangerous, we've
| likely lost the ability to dig a mine in the first place.
| spawarotti wrote:
| How long will the fuel last? Sabine Hossenfelder references
| studies in which we have enough Uranium for 50 years max.
|
| 6:08 here: https://youtu.be/0kahih8RT1k
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Uranium and thorium fuel on earth can make 100% of today's
| primary energy for about 4 billion years, using breeder
| reactors, which were proven in 1952 near Arco Idaho at the
| Experimental Breeder Reactor 1.
|
| Writeup explaining this with lots of actual scientific
| references at the bottom here:
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-
| is-...
|
| People who say uranium will last 50 years either aren't aware
| of breeder reactors, which have been the long-term plan for
| nuclear fission since the 1940s, or they're misleading you.
| We found a lot more uranium than expected in the interim so
| they have been put off for a while. But we know they work and
| have built many.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Everything I know about breeder reactors comes from the
| Radioactive Boyscout, which says they sounds great but are
| insanely unstable and not yet workable.
|
| Is that true? What's the state of breeder reactors today?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Russia has been operating big ones for decades just fine.
| The US had a few excellent and beautiful prototype ones
| (EBR-2 and FFTF), but Clinton shut them down. France
| built 2 big ones, the first (Phenix) was great and the
| 2nd (4x larger, SuperPhenix) had various non-nuclear
| problems and shut down with a poor overall history. China
| and India both have small ones running fine and big ones
| under construction.
|
| Many Breeder type reactors also exhibit natural safety
| characteristics, where they can both shut down and remove
| afterglow heat with no external power or user
| intervention at all. This is because of low-pressure
| coolants like liquid metal or molten salt. They can
| handle loss of heat sink, loss of flow, and tranisent
| overpower (e.g. rod widthdrawal) without the control rods
| going in. Normal water cooled reactors could not survive
| such events without melting.
|
| So there's a strong argument to be made that while
| regular reactors are very safe, breeder reactors can be
| even safer.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002
| 954...
| pfdietz wrote:
| France has abandoned their fast breeder effort. As in,
| put the research on the shelf and stopped funding. That
| should tell you what they think its prospects are.
| geysersam wrote:
| What are the disadvantages of thorium reactors, making them
| so rare in practice? Cost?
| jabl wrote:
| There's no particular upside that at the moment would
| justify commercializing the technology.
| tejohnso wrote:
| This is so depressing. It's nearly impossible to form a
| confident opinion these days without a ton of effort. I
| heard Sabine, I said to myself...makes sense...and it looks
| like she's put a lot of work into understanding all of
| this, and she is a professional. So that was it.
|
| Now you're saying she's wrong. _Very_ wrong. And you 're a
| nuclear reactor physicist (thanks for comment!) Am I going
| to go read all of the relevant references for myself and
| study the state of the art well enough to understand it
| all? No, I'm not because I'm not a policy maker or advisor.
|
| I feel like there is a legitimate problem with science
| communication, especially where it can influence government
| policy.
| seventytwo wrote:
| It's always been this way, and it will always be this
| way.
|
| Don't get discouraged. This is all part of the process of
| finding and disseminating knowledge.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| She address fast-breeders and thorium in the same video:
| https://youtu.be/0kahih8RT1k?t=734 (concluding that they
| are too complex and expensive)
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _(concluding that they are too complex and expensive)_
|
| She states "To make a long story short, they didn't catch
| on, and I don't think they ever will."
|
| She states her opinion, and there's nothing wrong with
| that, but (a) others may have a different opinion, and
| (b) it may be possible to make them more practical if
| more effort is put into them that has been in the past.
| mlindner wrote:
| Sabine I've found to be spreading nothing but FUD
| personally. I've only watched a few of her videos but she
| seems to enjoy inflating minor issues into major ones and
| then proclaiming everything can't work.
| godelski wrote:
| FWIW, as someone with a degree in physics, I don't know
| anyone with a similar background that watches her
| content. It's not that she is frequently wrong, it is
| that the opinions are pretty biased and cherry picking.
| She seems to be more focused on content creation than the
| actual physics. Honestly I think PBS does a much better
| job, and importantly stresses that their presentation is
| overly simplified. A lot of science is extremely nuanced
| and a first order approximation can lead you in the
| complete opposite direction, so it usually is a good
| indicator at who to trust. Are they telling you the way
| it is or are they attempting to convey a complex topic as
| simply and accurately as possible? The difference is
| often subtle.
| in3d wrote:
| Definitely. Her content gets posted here a lot but the
| quality of her videos is just not very good and she's not
| great at explaining things either.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Sabine is very opinionated, which is fine for a theorist,
| but I do find that she sometimes slightly misrepresents
| the views she disagrees with in her science
| communication.
| AQuantized wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that being a theoretical physicist
| working in a niche subfield doesn't necessarily qualify
| you to talk broadly about other fields and assess their
| societal impacts. I think these types of videos work best
| when it's clearly just a smart person sharing what
| they've learned to engage your interest rather than as a
| substitute for a lecture by an expert.
| [deleted]
| natmaka wrote:
| Can you name a single industrial satisfyingly-working
| breeder reactor? AFAIK, and after ~70 years of research
| (juge investments in many nations) there is none.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Except for breeder reactors are even more uneconomical,
| have even higher proliferation risk. So yes they are a
| solution if you ignore all the other issues with them.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| This is making a lot of assumptions about what uranium is
| economically viable to extract. Specifically, this link
| appears to be assuming that it is possible to filter the
| entire oceans and Earth's entire crust for all the uranium
| and thorium they store. Those are both obviously
| unreasonable assumptions.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| For seawater extraction, you just put enough uranium
| capture fibers in a few places and the uranium is
| delivered to you slowly over billions of years via ocean
| currents. This is well supported by the various articles
| and entire scientific issue featured in the See Also
| section.
|
| But if you don't buy seawater extraction, check out the
| Weinberg 1959 reference
| (https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3060564), which contains a
| calculation for how much earth would need to be moved to
| power the entire world on granite. They calculate that
| we'd need granite mining from the crust about the same
| order of magnitude of the fossil fuel mining operations
| at that time. Of course, mining granite is far less
| destructive than mining fossil fuel, so it's totally
| acceptable.
|
| Recall that there is 20x more nuclear energy in average
| crustal rock than there is chemical energy in coal, per
| kg. So to a breeder reactor, it's literally as if the
| entire earth's crust is made of pure coal, 20x over.
|
| Will that last long enough for ya? :)
|
| And with that kind of energy density, it's _all_
| economical to extract.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| this has some serious problems in the analysis. First of
| all, about half of the earth's crust is under an ocean.
| Second, of the remaining half, it is on average about 10
| miles deep. There is no way that digging up 10 miles of
| rock to get to some scattered uranium atoms is net
| positive from an energy perspective. The deepest mines in
| the world are 2.5 miles under ground, and is in a
| location with a very high concentration of gold. Most of
| the uranium in the earth's crust is at concentrations of
| less than 1 part in 1 million, and one ton of uranium can
| only (being maximally optimistic) lift 1 million tons of
| rock by about 1 mile, so any uranium lower than that (not
| in a major vein) will produce negative energy to mine.
| Also, just because it's technically net energy positive,
| doesn't mean it's efficient at all. If we want mining to
| be at least somewhat efficient, we will only be getting
| roughly 1/3rd of that (since by the time you are lower,
| you will be losing too much energy to be cost
| competitive).
|
| This very basic analysis suggests that your link is off
| by at least a factor of 100, which doesn't inspire much
| confidence in their results.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ocean floor bedrock is basalt, which has much lower U/Th
| content than granite. Granites are continental rocks.
|
| Geologically, U and Th have been concentrated over the
| billions of years by about a factor of 1000 in the
| minerals that have accumulated in continents. Were this
| not the case, fission power would be completely
| impractical.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If you fully fission the U + Th in an average chunk of
| crustal rock (using breeding so you can use the 238U and
| 232Th) then said rock releases fission energy equal to the
| combustion energy of 20x its mass in coal. So with breeders
| we can in effect treat the entire Earth's crust as something
| an order of magnitude more energy rich than coal.
|
| (Whether breeders are practical or competitive is another
| matter, but then fusion looks pretty challenged in that
| respect also.)
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| This shocking factlet is repeated, verified, and credited
| to you in the writeup in my sibling comment.
| pfdietz wrote:
| So you did, thanks! BTW, the Earth becomes uninhabitable
| in about 1 billion years, not 4.
| ncmncm wrote:
| We could get there even quicker with a little effort.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Yea the efforts of people like you pushing anti-nuclear
| views. Can't wait for the greenhouse gases to make
| warming even worse while we use NAT gas and coal to
| smooth over wind and solar.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| The main reason is because fission isn't cool anymore. Been
| there, done that.... Fusion is still super cool with all the
| big devices they're building.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| You're probably right that fission isn't considered cool
| anymore. I guess my heartburn is in that it most definitely
| should be.
|
| I guess most people don't appreciate the relatively tiny
| fission plant workhorses producing >50% of all zero-carbon
| electricity in the USA.
|
| At least we have nuclear tiktok influencers nowadays!
| DominoTree wrote:
| I feel like the primary reason it's not cool these days is
| because significant new developments are rare because it's
| pretty-much been figured out and it basically just works
| with minimal downsides, and folks think that light water
| reactors are all the same
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Does it make sense to build nuclear reactors when the
| environment we are engineering for them to exist in is rapidly
| changing?
|
| Fukushima showed us the drastic and long lasting consequences
| of one little design oversight and that was in an environment
| the reactors where engineered for.
|
| Personally I can't answer this question with the limited
| knowledge that I have. It seems like a catch 22 type situation.
| feet wrote:
| The consequences from pushing more carbon out are worse than
| one nuclear plant failure
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| So are you saying that only one plant will fail out of the
| many we need to build and that our only option is to
| continue using hydrocarbons for energy?
|
| I'm tempted to be hopeful and say that nuclear will solve
| all our problems but seeing how the energy industry got us
| here in the first place I'm sceptical they have our best
| interests at heart.
| feet wrote:
| By energy industry do you mean oil and gas? Are they the
| ones building nuclear plants?
|
| Engineering improves over time, considering we seem to
| have someone who works in the industry in this thread
| perhaps they can inform us about current failure rates
| and risks. My assumption is that due to past failures,
| extra mitigations have been put into place with modern
| reactors.
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| > By energy industry do you mean oil and gas? Are they
| the ones building nuclear plants?
|
| Yes I was referring to oil and gas. While they are not
| the ones building nuclear power plants as we have seen
| when a particular part of the energy industry becomes
| entrenched it has a tendency to use its profits to change
| the narrative around its downsides.
| feet wrote:
| That's purely a problem of capitalism itself rather than
| any specific industry. If we nationalize power generation
| we should be able to avoid those problems.
| jeandejean wrote:
| For a technology that has the promise of clean energy for
| humanity, I am shocked it's receiving that small amount of
| funding, while we have been distributing literally trillions
| globally during the pandemic...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dogcomplex wrote:
| A friendly reminder that the idea posed by a pioneer of nuclear
| energy of just dumping big bombs in a hole and harvesting the
| heat energy with steam/plasma has never been invalidated and
| remains the most efficiently-simple solution immediately viable
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER
|
| If containment is your concern (though underground blast effects
| are decently understood, and blast chambers could be constructed
| with still strongly net economic/energy positive) - this does not
| need to be built around any population centers. At a cost of 1.5%
| efficiency loss per 1000 km, UHV power lines can direct it from a
| single write-off location anywhere on earth. That single location
| can likely be scaled to supply well beyond the total current
| global energy production.
|
| https://en.geidco.org.cn/aboutgei/uhv/
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| What about earth quakes?
|
| (I didn't click the links)
| lostmsu wrote:
| Another no container idea (this one is crazy): just blow them
| in the ocean, that will evaporate some water and speed up
| evaporation of some more. Harvest energy with existing
| hydroelectric setuos once it passes the weather cycle.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Lmao, that sounds like something straight out of Futurama.
|
| The Wikipedia article you liked says it "economically
| unviable", but fails to provide a source
| rbanffy wrote:
| I'm glad, but I hope we still invest in Plan-B's because we are
| literally betting our civilisation on moving away from carbon.
| timmg wrote:
| I wonder how this compares to the amount of money invested in
| crypto startups in the past few years. (I don't mean the value of
| crypto or the amount of money that was traded into it -- just the
| amount VCs invested into crypto startups.)
|
| I don't know if that means people that allocate capital think
| crypto has a better chance of changing the world than nuclear
| fusion -- or if it's something else. But it is strange to compare
| the funding of each.
| ushakov wrote:
| i wonder how this compares to the amount of money invested in
| autonomous driving startups
| rjmunro wrote:
| Not that it has a better chance of changing the world, just
| that it has a better chance of making them some money back in a
| reasonable time.
| missedthecue wrote:
| There are probably a lot more founders with crypto ideas than
| founders with fusion ideas.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That would be an argument for having _more_ investment into
| fusion.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Why? If you get 25 crypto startups for every fusion
| startups, you're necessarily going to see more funding in
| the crypto sector.
| kortilla wrote:
| >or if it's something else
|
| It's something else. Many people want their money invested in
| something with a good risk adjusted returns. Only a tiny subset
| of investors invest significant portions of their capital into
| significantly lower expected value outcomes because they like
| the field.
| meowkit wrote:
| Apples to oranges. Investments are compared by their up front
| costs and rates of returns.
|
| Crypto up front costs are dirt cheap as most of it is open
| source software, and in a bull mania the rates of returns are
| astronomical.
|
| Nuclear is a mature industry with R&D for fusion that has some
| of the largest up front capital costs on the planet for cutting
| edge materials, controls, land, and safety requirements. To top
| that off, the rates of returns are abysmal and take forever
| even compared to coal plants.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The total of crypto VC investments for 2021 was reported at
| $33B.
| manholio wrote:
| You could say the same thing about Bitcoin. Fusion is in the VC
| hype cycle but there are no new developments that suggest it can
| become cheaper and more predictable than fission, which itself is
| dying, primarily because of financial uncertainties and risks.
|
| On the contrary, physics suggest that performance scales with
| size, so even the extraordinary expensive ITER project is way too
| small to achieve engineering break even, let alone financial
| break-even. You will only hear about scientific break-even, which
| is a useless milestone because, yes, you get more energy than you
| put it, but you put electric energy and get fast neutron energy,
| only you need an order of magnitude more of that to get back the
| electricity you put in.
|
| Understanding different types of break-even would be an
| obligatory primer to anyone navigating hyped fusion claims:
| https://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/04/08/fusion-q-values-a...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Fusion reactors (after they're big enough to have ignited) have
| diseconomy of scale, due to the square-cube law. Cost scales
| (at least) as reactor volume, while power is limited by
| power/area through the surface of the reactor vessel.
| Gud wrote:
| Such a controversial topic these days. I got one am happy
| billions are being poured into fusion. Yes, massive investments
| in fission, solar and wind are required. But one by one the
| technical obstacles are being overcome for fusion. I say give
| fusion a chance
| blippage wrote:
| Scientists have been futzing around with fusion energy since I
| was a schoolboy in the 70's, and undoubtedly before. Maybe
| they'll be a breakthrough, but I think the odds are heavily
| against them.
|
| Fission, OTOH, seems an interesting bet. The problem with old-
| style reactors is that there's basically no ESD (Emergency
| Shutdown) that you can perform. Those radioactive rods are going
| keep radiating heat no matter what. Newer styles seem a much
| saner approach, were two different materials must be in contact
| for a reaction to occur. In an emergency you just let one of them
| drain out, thereby stopping the reaction.
|
| Coal is an abundant source of fuel with a proven track record.
| The big problem is with pollution. But there's no rule that says
| you have to puke out the waste into the atmosphere. It can be
| processed. After all, oil is pretty shitty when it comes up out
| of the ground, and needs a lot of processing. This is a costly
| exercise, of course, but one that we willingly undertake. The
| question now is one of economics: will the cost of waste
| processing mean that coal burning is feasible? It's a question
| that nobody seems interested in asking. We just seem to have the
| default assumption that coal energy was shitty in the past and
| must be shitty in the present. "Eww, coal".
| alexalx666 wrote:
| Deady epidemic - let's work from home!
|
| Russians attack Europe - let's invest in nuclear!
|
| What is the next disaster that will make another common sense
| thing happen ?
| mbgerring wrote:
| One novel approach to clean energy deployment would be to spend
| some of this money to deploy enough solar, wind and batteries to
| provide the enormous amounts of energy needed for all these sub-
| breakeven fusion experiments. Then, whether we get a viable
| fusion reactor or not, we all win.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| It seems more reasonable to me to try to figure out what would
| be a reasonable amount of money to spend on these projects
| independently, instead of tying the amount of clean energy
| deployment to the amount clean energy research for no apparent
| benefit
| kortilla wrote:
| Maybe we should fraud these people trying to invest in a better
| solution with worse ones!
| willis936 wrote:
| We've spent far more on solar than fusion. Why divert the nth
| dollar rather than diversify?
|
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2018/11/f57/Exami...
| hit8run wrote:
| boringg wrote:
| Hmm I suspect that this isn't accurate but if it is, also
| relevant is that in the last 12 months we were at the top of the
| crazy money market so people were handing out cash and desperate
| for something with a seeming return to it. Seems like a click-
| baity title to me.
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