[HN Gopher] U.S. Air Force selects fast microreactor for nuclear...
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U.S. Air Force selects fast microreactor for nuclear power pilot
Author : Turing_Machine
Score : 59 points
Date : 2023-09-01 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.powermag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.powermag.com)
| beefman wrote:
| The vendor, Oklo, was in the YC S14 batch and plans to go public
| in the next quarter or two
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/oklo-m-a-altc-acquisition/nu...
| adolph wrote:
| Oklo, what a clever name.
|
| _Oklo is a region near the town of Franceville, in the Haut-
| Ogooue province of the Central African country of Gabon.
| Several natural nuclear fission reactors were discovered in the
| uranium mines in the region in 1972._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Through a SPAC after their application to license their design
| was denied by the NRC, and the responses seem very immature.
| Does not inspire confidence.
|
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrc-denies-oklo-powers-plan...
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Initiated in response to a Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense
| Authorization Act requirement, DAF's Micro-Reactor Pilot Program
| seeks to build and operate at least one licensed microreactor by
| Dec. 31, 2027, that will deliver power and steam to a defense
| base under a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA).
|
| For those of you like me who got excited about the prospect of
| nuclear powered aircraft, the reactor is to power a base.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| For 24/7/365/30 constant airborne capabilities? Seems overkill
| to say the least. Also, not sure too many people would be happy
| with a nuclear reactor flying overhead.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > For 24/7/365/30 constant airborne capabilities?
|
| Probably for the ability to replace fossil fuels in an
| application where batteries don't have enough energy density.
|
| > Also, not sure too many people would be happy with a
| nuclear reactor flying overhead.
|
| Better not tell them the kinds of things in the cargo holds
| of existing planes.
| morugam wrote:
| [dead]
| S201 wrote:
| > For 24/7/365/30 constant airborne capabilities?
|
| I'm not saying it's necessary (or even a good idea, see the
| "accidents" section in the linked to article), but it also
| wouldn't be the first time:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chrome_Dome
| hangonhn wrote:
| Funnily enough, molten salt reactor were developed for this
| specific purpose:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Reactor_Experiment
| ceejayoz wrote:
| With some _very_ scary designs.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
| dmoy wrote:
| > deliver them with greater accuracy than was possible
| with intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs) at the
| time and, unlike them, could be recalled.
|
| hold up, what
|
| Launch the nukes, abort the launch, and then have the
| nukes... fly back to base, and land safely without
| exploding.
|
| Right I get that there's fail-safes for the warheads, but
| that seems definitely scary, I agree
| krisoft wrote:
| No, I'm afraid you are mistaken what is scary about
| these.
|
| People have "launch the nuke, abort the nuke, fly back to
| base and land safely without exploding" already. That is
| called a nuclear armed bomber.
|
| The scary thing about these is that their propulsion is a
| nuclear reactor. You know how in a jet engine the air is
| heated up by burning fuel? Here the air is heated up by
| comming into contact with the reactor. They exhaust
| fission products while they fly. To quote from the page:
| "The other major problem with the SLAM concept was the
| environmental damage caused by radioactive emissions
| during flight, and the disposal of the reactor at the end
| of the mission. Merkle estimated that about 100 grams of
| fission products would be produced, which would be
| dispersed over a wide area."
|
| This thing is by design, when nothing goes wrong leaves a
| contrail of radioactive contamination behind it. And when
| things go wrong it leaves even more contamination.
|
| And the funny thing is, the Russians are still
| experimenting with this tech:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
|
| And predictably as they were trying to scope their test
| wreckage from the sea floor they managed to have a
| radiation incident with it in 2019:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident
|
| (As you can read the exact circumstances are disputed,
| but I believe this is the most likely explanation of what
| we have seen.)
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The SLAM missile it was designed for was scarier than
| just that. It was to be able to fly supersonic close to
| the ground for months at end and could be modified to
| bleed radioactivity into the exhaust. So not only would
| it nuke several cities, it would then deafen, kill and/or
| radiation poison with its flyovers.
| nomel wrote:
| That sort of power density is just absolutely mind
| boggling.
| NikkiA wrote:
| When you absolutely must demonstrate how much 'the good
| guys' side you are.
| dylan604 wrote:
| when freedom is rained down, there are multiple forms of
| precipitation it can arrive
| cwp wrote:
| Also, potentially bad outcomes if a nuclear aircraft is shot
| down.
| mr337 wrote:
| You may find this interesting:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR5gefU87TY (t 6:12). Sadly it
| didn't pan out.
| abeppu wrote:
| They used the word 'pilot' in an ambiguous way, in the context
| of the Airforce, and then the first photo on the page is of an
| aircraft in flight. I think the editors _wanted_ you to
| momentarily think this was going to be an airborne reactor.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| You might be interested in:
|
| https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#cor...
|
| Or, just using reactors in a more straightforward way:
|
| https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist2.php#fi...
| skywal_l wrote:
| Although I am an advocate for nuclear power, I am a little
| worried about small reactors, which will inevitably warrant less
| attention and care.
|
| The smaller they are, there more there are, the more there is a
| risk of mistakes and dissemination to bad actors I think.
| callalex wrote:
| The US military has been safely running small mobile nuclear
| reactors for many human generations at this point.
| michael1999 wrote:
| The _Navy_ has been safely running reactors. Neither the Air
| Force, nor Marines have any real experience, and the Army
| experience was decidedly mixed.
| crmd wrote:
| This reactor is being run by a private company who will sell
| the power to the Air Force.
| [deleted]
| rightbyte wrote:
| Until n=0 goes to 1. As the Concorde.
|
| Like, this sudden optimism concerning nuclear power is a bit
| worrying. Lowest bidder building small plants everywhere.
| What a nightmare ...
|
| I really don't get where all this trust for the competence of
| others comes from.
| callalex wrote:
| But it's not sudden optimism at all, it's a multi-
| generational proven record.
| rightbyte wrote:
| They work until they don't and threaten to spread
| invisible poison that can make a x miles radius
| inhabitable. A "sorry but not sorry you choose to live
| next to it" event.
|
| And now we are supposed to put small ones kinda
| everywhere where incompetent morons or terrorist can blow
| them up?
| nomel wrote:
| To be fair, current power generation also spreads bad
| things, that will slowly make large areas of the planet
| uninhabitable.
|
| I don't think it's fair to think so little of the Nuclear
| Regulatory Commission. They have standards. I don't think
| it's reasonable to assume they will give up their
| standards of safety.
| nemo wrote:
| >And now we are supposed to put small ones kinda
| everywhere where incompetent morons or terrorist can blow
| them up?
|
| No one's said "we" are "supposed to put small ones kinda
| everywhere." This one's being installed at a military
| base. It should have adequate security.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > They work until they don't and threaten to spread
| invisible poison that can make a x miles radius
| inhabitable.
|
| The U.S. nuclear power industry has been producing energy
| for 66 years without a single fatality to a member of the
| general public.
|
| > And now we are supposed to put small ones kinda
| everywhere where incompetent morons or terrorist can blow
| them up?
|
| I'm pretty sure that a major military base in the middle
| of the Alaskan Interior has reasonably good security.
| ianburrell wrote:
| The Navy spends uses lots of people to run reactors on ships
| and spends tons of money training them.
|
| Small reactors won't be economical if they take that many
| people to run.
|
| Also, naval reactors aren't small. Aircraft carriers have two
| 250 MW (700 MW thermal) reactors. That is a respectable power
| plant and much larger than proposed modular reactors.
| adolph wrote:
| > Small reactors won't be economical if they take that many
| people to run.
|
| What are the numbers? What's the TCO difference to similar
| systems without atmospheric carbon emissions?
| kibwen wrote:
| The US Navy doesn't use nuclear reactors because of
| economics (they're quite expensive) or environmental
| concern. They use nukes because of the operational
| advantages of having a ship that only needs refueling
| once per decade. Any comparison to the naval use case is
| mostly useless when it comes to commercial power
| production.
| adolph wrote:
| The claim is "Small reactors won't be economical if they
| take that many people [as the US Navy] to run."
|
| The question is "What are the numbers?"
|
| Clearly the navy uses nukes due to advantageous
| performance characteristics. What are the numbers that a
| civilian small nuke must make to be viable?
| Alupis wrote:
| *Once per ~30 years[1], to be pedantic.
|
| The reasons are not simply refueling concerns, although
| that is a factor. The boats still need to refuel the
| humans onboard, ie. food supplies and occasionally
| munitions.
|
| The reactor powers the boat using less mass than a
| typical diesel-electric, is more quiet, and can remain
| underwater for an entire deployment if necessary -
| something that's simply not possible with other power
| generation methods.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia-
| class_submarine#:~:te....
| [deleted]
| Alupis wrote:
| > Also, naval reactors aren't small. Aircraft carriers have
| two 250 MW (700 MW thermal) reactors.
|
| Everything is relative - but there's vastly more nuclear
| powered submarines than aircraft carriers. The Virginia
| Class, for example, is powered by a single 30MW reactor[1].
|
| The article states these "microreactors" will range from
| 15MW to 100MW.
|
| The "Nukes" in the Navy are highly trained, yes, but a
| military environment is going to be far rougher than
| anything privately managed for land-side power generation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia-
| class_submarine#:~:te....
| connicpu wrote:
| Don't forget about nuclear submarines, those are quite a
| bit smaller e.g. the S6G model at around 165MW thermal with
| two 26MW steam turbines
| mrtksn wrote:
| I have similar reservations for proliferation of the nuclear
| energy as a whole. Currently, these devices need careful
| handling and we appear to have enough smart and serious people
| to do just that however I don't trust having enough of those
| people if we had a reactor in every city.
|
| But on the other hand we have managed to have air travel(which
| also relies on meticulous maintenance and operations) very safe
| despite sharp increase of flight over the years, so it must be
| possible to find a way to make it work.
| kibwen wrote:
| The relative safety of airlines is solely, solely, solely
| because of stringent safety regulation. If you see anyone
| arguing that nuclear power could be cheaper if we just waived
| regulation, you can safely disregard their opinion as
| hopelessly myopic.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Agree, the regulations would probably be part of the safe
| nuclear energy proliferation - if it happens.
| houseatrielah wrote:
| There's a big push for nuclear now, I'm curious, is there a
| hypothetical series of events that even an reasonable nuclear
| advocate is concerned about? They are mostly not too worried
| about Fukushima water for example.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The water being discharged into the Ocean from Fukushima
| isn't problematic but the cleanup from the entire debacle
| there is going to take somewhere around a trillion dollars
| and last 30+ years. There's still a multi thousand acre
| exclusion zone... Up until a few years ago, there was a large
| nuke plant with a history safety incidents, owned and
| operated by a company implicated in several bribery scandals,
| directly upwind from NYC.
|
| Nuclear technology, operated by responsible operators in
| well-designed plants is extremely safe. Unfortunately we live
| in a world where Nuke plant operators literally bribe
| legislators for billion dollar bailouts and the companies
| responsible for operating our fleet are the worst profit-
| maximizing ghouls you can imagine. It's the essence of John
| Glenn's quote about the Apollo missions, "My life depended on
| 150,000 pieces of equipment, each bought from the lowest
| bidder."
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/22/ohio-
| house-...
|
| https://www.politico.com/states/new-
| jersey/story/2020/06/24/...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The Fukushima water issue is a good test case.
|
| Anyone informed knows it is harmless.
| crmd wrote:
| I would much rather see a small number of highly secure mega
| baseload power plants distributed across the country and run
| like mainframes vs distributed computing.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >which will inevitably warrant less attention and care.
|
| Can you explain why this would be the case? I suppose you might
| need less manpower to run the reactor, which might mean fewer
| total man hours. But does that necessarily mean it gets less
| attention and care?
| discodave wrote:
| Presumably part of the appeal of a small reactor is it's
| cost. If you're trying to do things on a budget, then there's
| smaller budget for safety.
| nohankyou wrote:
| A large amount of small reactors would most likely need to
| be remotely managed. Think of it as a very large IoT
| toaster just begging to be played with.
| [deleted]
| ElFitz wrote:
| Considering the state of IoT (eg IoT botnets), I am not
| sure this will be reassuring to most. Unless it was
| sarcasm?
| waldothedog wrote:
| I believe the comment was intended to emphasize the
| issues created by mass scale remote mgmt
| nomel wrote:
| What's so unreasonable about this comment? Could someone
| explain?
|
| I think, in other words, the cost to guard and physically
| secure a reactor doesn't depend on the size of the reactor,
| just the existence of the reactor [1]. A large reactor
| would require the same defense as a small one.
|
| Note that the majority of the cost of nuclear is the
| _people_ [2].
|
| [1] https://www.nrc.gov/security/faq-force-on-force.html
|
| [2] https://energy.mit.edu/news/building-nuclear-power-
| plants/
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_nuclear_reactor
|
| It appears to not require active safety systems. And we are
| talking about Alaska.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Very excited to see some modern fast reactors happening!
|
| Nuclear waste leaves me with such reservations, these fuel cycles
| where we use a % or two of the energy, create a bunch of
| tranuranic waste, and then deal with stuff for thousands of
| years.
|
| Fasr reactors seem uneconomic, like something industry &
| capitalism would never ever do. The negative impact of everything
| else is so easy to externalize. The risk of doing anything new or
| well is so low.
|
| It's enormously sad to find that military and military alone has
| the capacity to try new things, to invest better in the future.
| But here, I'll take it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Nuclear is uneconomical because politics wants it to be.
|
| Leading up to the 1980s, nuclear was poised to replace
| basically the whole power grid. "Too cheap to meter" they said.
| Fossil fuel energy companies and the petroleum exporting
| countries who had only recently gotten their cartel going were,
| shall we say, not happy with this. (Also Russians. Literally
| they got caught funding anti-nuclear "environmental groups";
| someone published the documents after they went into Ukraine.
| Russia is another major petroleum exporter.)
|
| So they ran a propaganda campaign centered around Chernobyl to
| paint the safest known method of power generation as one too
| dangerous to use, so it would be buried in safety rules the
| incumbents weren't subject to themselves. (If a nuclear power
| plant released as much radiation as every coal-fired one does,
| it would be shut down.)
|
| And now they say "well, it would be nice, but we can't use it
| because it costs too much."
| kibwen wrote:
| I'm frustrated by this argument. Yes, nuclear power gets
| unfairly maligned across several axes. Yes, fossil fuel is
| even more of a disaster. But what we have now is a situation
| where nuclear power has all of its negative externalities
| properly priced in, whereas fossil fuel doesn't, and yet we
| have people arguing to _remove_ the forces that properly
| price in the externalities of nuclear rather than doing the
| right thing, which is properly pricing in the externalities
| of fossil fuels. This is counterproductive. Look around at
| our modern world and see everything enshittifying around us
| in the relentless pursuit of profit; now imagine that applied
| to nuclear power. What a nightmare.
| MaKey wrote:
| Thanks for putting your frustration into words so
| succinctly. I feel exactly the same!
| ToDougie wrote:
| How heavy is this waste, and can it be put into rockets and
| sent somewhere off-planet?
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| If nuclear waste is radioactive, it means that it can be
| refined into usable products for power production.
|
| The dangerous stuff that's left over is dangerous because it
| was formally cheaper to bury it and mine more than to refine it
| .
|
| Not to mention the majority of nuclear reactors were designed
| to create weapons grade materials which was an equally wasteful
| activity creative even more waste that needed refinement back
| to usable fuel.
|
| Now that's coming to an end since power production is far more
| important. There may be a point Where we will see ourselves
| digging up nuclear waste sites to recover the left over refuel.
| dmix wrote:
| Looks like the base in right next to Fairbanks, Alaska
| https://goo.gl/maps/3HBnJAtu5HnqXyyy9
|
| That must be a busy place for intercepting Russian aircraft.
| They've got 54 F-35's flying out of there and a bunch of
| surveillance crafts (+ apparently plenty of US army doing winter
| training, with some frequent Canadian visitors):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eielson_Air_Force_Base
|
| Apparently the base almost closed down following the cold war but
| then the northern pacific became a hot zone again with Russia and
| China.
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(page generated 2023-09-01 23:02 UTC)