(Thread IKs:
fart simpson)
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Sep 24, 2021 15:15
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indigi posted:molten salt reactors were “figured out” in the 80s in the sense that a few tiny test ones were built and never iterated upon, I don’t think thorium had even been tried until this century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 Edit: Though it is true that we basically gave up on reactor designs in the years after Chernobyl. genericnick has issued a correction as of 15:21 on Sep 24, 2021 |
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Sep 24, 2021 15:18
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genericnick posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300 yeah but that’s not a molten salt reactor, which is the key design improvement
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Sep 24, 2021 15:28
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indigi posted:yeah but that’s not a molten salt reactor, which is the key design improvement Ah, you mean thorium for molten salt reactors, misread you. Yeah, don't think there was one.
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Sep 24, 2021 15:34
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genericnick posted:Ah, you mean thorium for molten salt reactors, misread you. Yeah, don't think there was one. Yeah, it seems a pretty important step, taking both the pressure and uranium fuel out of the system. Honestly, it is probably the closest we are going to get to the safety of fusion with any sort of practically before climate change really makes life difficult. The question is of course going to be about scale. —- So what are the odds that China gets long-distance maglev and molten salt-thorium reactors going before California can built HSR between Bakersfield and Merced? Ardennes has issued a correction as of 15:53 on Sep 24, 2021 |
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Sep 24, 2021 15:41
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it’s still kind of funny to me that in 2021 with nuclear technology unfathomable to people in the 17th century our main method for generating power is still turning a liquid into a gas which then spins something else
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Sep 24, 2021 15:49
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That's physics for you, got to spin stuff to get electricity.
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Sep 24, 2021 15:58
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That's how nuclear power works too e: some of them like Brunswick have the official name "Brunswick Steam Electric Plant" brugroffil has issued a correction as of 16:03 on Sep 24, 2021 |
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Sep 24, 2021 15:59
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i remember being a kid and thinking that nuclear power like fueled things with radiation somehow and being disappointed when we went to the local nuclear plant on a field trip and they explained that it was just electricity
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Sep 24, 2021 16:01
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Red and Black posted:https://twitter.com/business/status/1441332992975065093 OH gently caress OH poo poo HELL YES
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Sep 24, 2021 16:02
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Rutibex posted:what the hell china has thorium reactors now wtf is a thorium reactor and why is it significant?
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Sep 24, 2021 16:02
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Agrajag posted:wtf is a thorium reactor and why is it significant? it means china did a shitload of loops around un'goro and got to exalted with the thorium brotherhood, something no other world power is willing to do
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Sep 24, 2021 16:04
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Sep 24, 2021 16:04
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Serf posted:i remember being a kid and thinking that nuclear power like fueled things with radiation somehow and being disappointed when we went to the local nuclear plant on a field trip and they explained that it was just electricity Nuclear power on spacecraft kinda work differently, but ultimately it's still "heat up a thing and turn it into a gas"
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Sep 24, 2021 16:04
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gradenko_2000 posted:But if China bans crypto what are they gonna use all that energy on When Xi Dah Dah peacefully reunify Taiwan, they will switch most of the fossil fuel consumption to thorium-nuclear electric
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Sep 24, 2021 16:06
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Red and Black posted:https://twitter.com/business/status/1441332992975065093 lol
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Sep 24, 2021 16:09
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Agrajag posted:wtf is a thorium reactor and why is it significant? a thorium reactor (of whatever type) is significant because it uses thorium instead of enriched uranium and produces a lot less radioactive waste, one of the (if not the) worst things about nuclear power. a molten salt reactor takes the high pressure out of the cooling/power generation system which removes another of the more dangerous things from nuclear power (potential for explosive failures). combined, it’s pretty much best case scenario for cheap, consistent, abundant power generation it’s been years since I’ve kept up on this stuff so I can’t really give any technical details or whatever but that’s the important broad strokes
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Sep 24, 2021 16:12
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I was always lead to believe that we were at a critical juncture like ~70 years ago where we had two options on how to develop nuclear energy. Uranium or molten salts, one of them was safer, had more materials to produce energy for longer periods of time, couldn't be weaponized, etc. Well we chose uranium because it COULD be weaponized despite all the other cons.
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Sep 24, 2021 16:16
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Sep 24, 2021 16:17
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Cao Ni Ma posted:I was always lead to believe that we were at a critical juncture like ~70 years ago where we had two options on how to develop nuclear energy. Uranium or molten salts, one of them was safer, had more materials to produce energy for longer periods of time, couldn't be weaponized, etc. Well we chose uranium because it COULD be weaponized despite all the other cons. I’m pretty sure most molten salt reactors have used uranium
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Sep 24, 2021 16:19
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indigi posted:a thorium reactor (of whatever type) is significant because it uses thorium instead of enriched uranium and produces a lot less radioactive waste, one of the (if not the) worst things about nuclear power. a molten salt reactor takes the high pressure out of the cooling/power generation system which removes another of the more dangerous things from nuclear power (potential for explosive failures). combined, it’s pretty much best case scenario for cheap, consistent, abundant power generation man that poo poo sounds amazing having that sort of nuclear power is an absurd economic game changer wtf
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Sep 24, 2021 16:21
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indigi posted:a thorium reactor (of whatever type) is significant because it uses thorium instead of enriched uranium and produces a lot less radioactive waste, one of the (if not the) worst things about nuclear power. a molten salt reactor takes the high pressure out of the cooling/power generation system which removes another of the more dangerous things from nuclear power (potential for explosive failures). combined, it’s pretty much best case scenario for cheap, consistent, abundant power generation The bigger thing is non-proliferation. Uranium solid fuel reactors are step one in making a nuclear weapon, which means the "We have the bomb and you don't" crew doesn't like dirty non-bomb-havers building reactors.
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Sep 24, 2021 16:28
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Honestly waste is a red herring. We know how to deal with waste. It's a PR problem, not an engineering one. burying it in bunkers isn’t what I’d call “knowing how to deal with it” but even in that case I agree that it poses very little danger to humans (barring unforeseen natural disaster or some absurd level of terrorism)
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Sep 24, 2021 16:42
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indigi posted:I’m pretty sure most molten salt reactors have used uranium I meant thorium molten salt reactors. I went back and read about it and yeah, off by a few years but we had a running experimental reactor in the mid 60s, so the actual scientific theory was probably written up in the 50s. And this is a note from someone that knew the guy championing thorium over uranium at the time: quote:Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. ... his team built a working reactor ... and he spent the rest of his 18-year tenure trying to make thorium the heart of the nation's atomic power effort. He failed. Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs. Increasingly shunted aside, Weinberg was finally forced out in 1973
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Sep 24, 2021 16:44
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lmao looks like crypto nerds are losing their poo poo on reddit and theyre coming up with weird conspiracy theories
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Sep 24, 2021 16:49
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indigi posted:burying it in bunkers isn’t what I’d call “knowing how to deal with it” but even in that case I agree that it poses very little danger to humans (barring unforeseen natural disaster or some absurd level of terrorism) unless you have a way to accelerate radioactive decay by a thousand fold, burying it is how to deal with it
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Sep 24, 2021 16:50
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Raskolnikov38 posted:unless you have a way to accelerate radioactive decay by a thousand fold, burying it is how to deal with it one weird trick to dealing with nuclear waste is not to create it in the first place
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Sep 24, 2021 16:54
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Just make reactors that work off nuclear waste, ez
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Sep 24, 2021 16:55
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indigi posted:one weird trick to dealing with nuclear waste is not to create it in the first place oh you have a carbon free energy cycle that can meet modern energy demand then?
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Sep 24, 2021 16:55
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Grapplejack posted:Just make reactors that work off nuclear waste, ez actually could you just shoot neutrons at the waste until its all non-radioactive daughter particles?
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Sep 24, 2021 16:56
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Raskolnikov38 posted:unless you have a way to accelerate radioactive decay by a thousand fold, burying it is how to deal with it Raskolnikov38 posted:actually could you just shoot neutrons at the waste until its all non-radioactive daughter particles? You have essentially just described nuclear fuel reprocessing. The problem there is the same though. It makes bomb food. So the old "dig a big hole" strategy is still the easiest.
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Sep 24, 2021 16:56
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Right now we build giant concrete and steel casks to hold the material onsite. An entire storage yard (isfsi) that holds a lifetime of waste might take up 2-5 acres.
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Sep 24, 2021 16:57
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i thought reprocessing was just digging through fuel rods for uranium atoms that didn't get hit by neutrons
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Sep 24, 2021 16:58
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Raskolnikov38 posted:oh you have a carbon free energy cycle that can meet modern energy demand then? yeah put a big mirror in front of a glass bottle of water and boil it.
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Sep 24, 2021 16:58
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i thought reprocessing was just digging through fuel rods for uranium atoms that didn't get hit by neutrons how would one accomplish this
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Sep 24, 2021 16:59
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indigi posted:how would one accomplish this well the ones that didn't get hit are still uranium so you can chemically separate them
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Sep 24, 2021 16:59
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A very small shovel
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Sep 24, 2021 17:00
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brugroffil posted:Right now we build giant concrete and steel casks to hold the material onsite. An entire storage yard (isfsi) that holds a lifetime of waste might take up 2-5 acres. but hackers can turn that into a dirty bomb
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Sep 24, 2021 17:00
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i thought reprocessing was just digging through fuel rods for uranium atoms that didn't get hit by neutrons It's all quite expensive though and someone might make a bomb, so instead we're just dumping megatons of radioactive waste into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
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Sep 24, 2021 17:03
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| # ? May 27, 2024 09:31 |
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lol that the threat of Communism justified the accumulation of nuclear weapons over progress in nuclear energy, and that this leads to falling behind Communism in this area decades later.
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Sep 24, 2021 17:25
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