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