3 ms·

Would be very interesting to see nuclear energy sources harnessed to split carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon or generated into liquid fuels. I can't wait t

• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  For a number of reasons that won't happen with existing plants, but the two bigs ones are that the plant economics are based on selling electricity to the grid and the operating cost of a nuclear plant today, makes for very expensive oil and gasoline (an equivalent of $125 - $150 barrel of crude oil prices). However if you built a nuclear plant that was specifically designed for F-T (so for example you used it to bring the F-T reactor up to 1300 degrees) you might be able to get the cost down to something a bit more competitive at the moment. The big advantage of course is that you could build such a plant with a 50 mile (80 km) radius (thus ensuring that even a Chernobyl style disaster would have not have long term effects on anyone outside of the safe zone) build a rail spur or a pipeline to exfiltrate the production.
• pjc50 10y ago
  I believe the US Navy already have pilot plants for doing this on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. It's too expensive for land use but much better than shipping across potentially hostile waters. (Gasoline on US bases in Afghanistan ended up costing something more than $100/USgal, due to being taken overland several thousand miles through Pakistan under armed escort due to occasional Taliban attack.)