4 ms·

> Is it just "this is how we always do these things" or is there something else going on here? That tech is known, well designed, approved and extensively prov

by DrNuke 7y ago

> Is it just "this is how we always do these things" or is there something else going on here? That tech is known, well designed, approved and extensively proven through many thousand years manwork experience worldwide. It’s also the most affordable in liberalized markets. Going smaller & modular is the real novelty in the industry, for grid-agnostic coupling and decoupling. FYI: I have been consulting and designing innovative or exotic NPPs for years and I am now pretty confident I will not live long enough to see any one of them built and working, maybe not even at the demonstrator stage... but this side of the story might come good for another post ehehe.

Beltiras 7y ago
I'm just a layman with enthusiastic interest. Can I ask you about one thing in this pipeline of decision making since you are in the field? Refueling is easier to do in MSRs and nigh takes away an embarrassing long downtime while the solid fuel is loaded. Why is that not a first concern (less downtime means more energy from roughly same capital expenditure)? Safety is critical. It also costs a lot. With MSRs you need less land and can place the plant closer to the point of use (frozen plug to drain tank makes it so that any runaway is contained without intervention). It's even been suggested that for high-thermal uses like steel plants you could get better efficiency by using a thermal plant instead of making electricity for at least a twofold gain in power use. Is there anything inherently wrong with that idea? Is the dialysis design as solid as it looks like on paper? Are there operational problems with it that the advocates are not talking about? I have so many questions.....
- DrNuke 7y ago
  Good to have interested laymen, really, so thanks! The fundamental point is (in my very humble opinion, mind) you may still have a business case for nuclear in 2020 but no feasible return on investment against non-nuclear sources for decades-long experiments that, all in all, are aimed at marginal improvements in the grand scheme of things and the enormous hassle proponents have to face. It is fusion or nothing, apart of a couple of Gen IV that are advanced enough already, for the next 20-30 years or such in the West (China or Russia might be more ambitious, but they are not liberal or neoliberal democracies, so they can play a different game to some extent)... until all the PWRs still operating worldwide must be put down for obsolescence. For a layman computer science comparison, think of the still up-and-running fortran legacy in some sectors (banks?) you won’t really really want to drop if not really forced to... because it works, you need no fix, you do not expect any unheard catastrophic incident or accident anymore.
  - Beltiras 7y ago
    That's the thing. Thorium doesn't sound to me like an incremental change at all. It sounds like a gamechanger. There is no blast radius. At all. Criticality in that sense is not possible. There's improvement along every measurable criteria of operation. Some of those improvements are not small either. This is all contingent on me not being mistaken in my assumptions. I've only ever seen the argument from the advocates. It sounds a little apocalyptic putting all of ones hopes on a technology that may or may not work at all. We have no guarantee that fusion will provide a return. It's the tech of choice because of wishful thinking. Gen 4 and liquid fuels are proven to work and eliminate a big slew of the disadvantages that made people fearful of NPPs. IMO if a part of the solution to CO2 is DAC then we will need massive energy generation to run the capture plants and we need them soon. No tech can deliver that in the next 10 years safely except Thorium. There's nothing wrong with old tech in computer science. You can containerize Fortran batch programs with ease. All old things come back once in a while. Functional programming is now the rave and Common LiSP actually sees use.
    - DrNuke 7y ago
      > There's nothing wrong with old tech in computer science. You can containerize Fortran batch programs with ease. All old things come back once in a while. Functional programming is now the rave and Common LiSP actually sees use. You got it. May I second that as a nuclear eng for nuclear? Small & Modular is your container... and the novel, distributed grid at transnational level is your framework!?
      - Beltiras 7y ago
        I don't think that translates well here. There aren't very many new projects being started up using Fortran. There are some. But the vast majority of Fortran is shrinking legacy because we have better solutions to those problems today (R/Python for Fortran).
    - jason0597 7y ago
      >Gen 4 and liquid fuels are proven to work Proven to work on lab scale, or an industrial scale? Because one thing is very different from the other
victorfriedrich 7y ago
Hearing about the thorium fuel cycle for the first time – would you say that this article from 2012 is still up to date? https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thi...

by DrNuke 7y ago

Beltiras 7y ago

I'm just a layman with enthusiastic interest. Can I ask you about one thing in this pipeline of decision making since you are in the field? Refueling is easier to do in MSRs and nigh takes away an embarrassing long downtime while the solid fuel is loaded. Why is that not a first concern (less downtime means more energy from roughly same capital expenditure)? Safety is critical. It also costs a lot. With MSRs you need less land and can place the plant closer to the point of use (frozen plug to drain tank makes it so that any runaway is contained without intervention). It's even been suggested that for high-thermal uses like steel plants you could get better efficiency by using a thermal plant instead of making electricity for at least a twofold gain in power use. Is there anything inherently wrong with that idea? Is the dialysis design as solid as it looks like on paper? Are there operational problems with it that the advocates are not talking about? I have so many questions.....

DrNuke 7y ago
Good to have interested laymen, really, so thanks! The fundamental point is (in my very humble opinion, mind) you may still have a business case for nuclear in 2020 but no feasible return on investment against non-nuclear sources for decades-long experiments that, all in all, are aimed at marginal improvements in the grand scheme of things and the enormous hassle proponents have to face. It is fusion or nothing, apart of a couple of Gen IV that are advanced enough already, for the next 20-30 years or such in the West (China or Russia might be more ambitious, but they are not liberal or neoliberal democracies, so they can play a different game to some extent)... until all the PWRs still operating worldwide must be put down for obsolescence. For a layman computer science comparison, think of the still up-and-running fortran legacy in some sectors (banks?) you won’t really really want to drop if not really forced to... because it works, you need no fix, you do not expect any unheard catastrophic incident or accident anymore.
- Beltiras 7y ago
  That's the thing. Thorium doesn't sound to me like an incremental change at all. It sounds like a gamechanger. There is no blast radius. At all. Criticality in that sense is not possible. There's improvement along every measurable criteria of operation. Some of those improvements are not small either. This is all contingent on me not being mistaken in my assumptions. I've only ever seen the argument from the advocates. It sounds a little apocalyptic putting all of ones hopes on a technology that may or may not work at all. We have no guarantee that fusion will provide a return. It's the tech of choice because of wishful thinking. Gen 4 and liquid fuels are proven to work and eliminate a big slew of the disadvantages that made people fearful of NPPs. IMO if a part of the solution to CO2 is DAC then we will need massive energy generation to run the capture plants and we need them soon. No tech can deliver that in the next 10 years safely except Thorium. There's nothing wrong with old tech in computer science. You can containerize Fortran batch programs with ease. All old things come back once in a while. Functional programming is now the rave and Common LiSP actually sees use.
  - DrNuke 7y ago
    > There's nothing wrong with old tech in computer science. You can containerize Fortran batch programs with ease. All old things come back once in a while. Functional programming is now the rave and Common LiSP actually sees use. You got it. May I second that as a nuclear eng for nuclear? Small & Modular is your container... and the novel, distributed grid at transnational level is your framework!?
    - Beltiras 7y ago
      I don't think that translates well here. There aren't very many new projects being started up using Fortran. There are some. But the vast majority of Fortran is shrinking legacy because we have better solutions to those problems today (R/Python for Fortran).
  - jason0597 7y ago
    >Gen 4 and liquid fuels are proven to work Proven to work on lab scale, or an industrial scale? Because one thing is very different from the other

victorfriedrich 7y ago

Hearing about the thorium fuel cycle for the first time – would you say that this article from 2012 is still up to date? https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thi...