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Britain to start approval process for Rolls-Royce mini nuclear reactor

452 points by leephillips 5y ago

LatteLazy 5y ago
It will be safe, quick, clean, cheap and efficient. They just need 500bn to build the first part of the first one, 50 years to plan it, a huge liability cover and unlimited cleanup support.
dazbradbury 5y ago
Are the various "small" nuclear reactor projects seen as a way to tide over the gap until fusion (which has a similar number of startups and organisations working on it) takes over? Or a bet that fusion won't be feasible in the end? Or are they seen as filling different gaps and co-existing longer term?
- aeontech 5y ago
  I think small reactors are proven to be feasible now, and can be producing energy in short term. Fusion is a longer-term bet – it's probably coming, but there's no certainty on the timeline.
- dmitrygr 5y ago
  Even if fusion is feasible, it will not solve the problems people keep hoping it will. 1. Proliferation. A thorium reactor already has no proliferation risks 2. Costs. LOL. At least 2000 years to recoup the R&D, and then OpEx still exists 3. Fuel availability. Thorium. Reactor. 4. Waste. Where do you think all those neutrons will go? The container. which will slowly become radioactive as you transmute it thus... IT will also become brittle and need replacement. It is ... nuclear waste. Radioactive and in need of storage. Also: a thorium reactor can use existing nuclear waste to for a while it'll REDUCE amount of waste we have to deal with The one and only thing fusion does have going for it: at least IN THEORY it might be possible to do on a space ship by collecting interstellar gas. Not much heavy isotopes there but plenty oh H and some He
  - philipkglass 5y ago
    Thorium reactors still have proliferation risks. See this explanation written by physicist and HN commenter acidburnNSA: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth3 https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth3
  - soperj 5y ago
    There's already a reactor that can do this (CANDU reactor), and has been operational for decades, no research required. That there is little new investment in building them tells me that no one really cares about reducing the amount of nuclear waste, and that it's all very political.
    - retrac 5y ago
      Yep. Ontario's power reactors can (and have!) run on plain uranium, partially depleted uranium "waste" from American power reactors, and my favourite: a mix of depleted uranium and ex-Soviet warhead plutonium [1]. A thorium breeding cycle is also possible, in theory with CANDU and it's actually being done with India's heavy water pressurized reactors using thorium, which are an indirect derivative. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russian-plutonium-one-step-closer-to-canada-1.235704 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russian-plutonium-one-step-cl...
- nicoburns 5y ago
  Fusion isn't proven yet, so government can't really plan for it. Even if it does arrive, nobody knows when that might be. It could easily be in 100 years for all we know. Small nuclear reactors are seen as a way to get the benefits of fission at lower cost.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  There's not really that level of central planning going on here (and IMO that's a good thing).
- loeg 5y ago
  Neither? Fusion is not feasible right now, and we need power now. It doesn’t really matter whether fusion eventually becomes viable. Fission is fine for the long term; fusion would also be fine, if it eventually worked.
- zucker42 5y ago
  Metaculus indicates that the first fusion plant may not be online until the 2040s[1]. We shouldn't be not building lower carbon energy infrastructure now with the idea that fusion will save us. [1] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/363/will-a-fusion-based-electrical-generation-facility-generation-100-mw-or-more-using-only-fusion-as-an-energy-source-come-into-service-by-2030/ https://www.metaculus.com/questions/363/will-a-fusion-based-...
- toast0 5y ago
  I think all of these projects are coming together primarily to replace the existing nuclear plants. As the older plants reach the end of their operational life, there's still a desire for fission power; building a new plant with the old designs doesn't work for a lot of reasons, so hopefully new designs that take into account 40-60 years of operational, construction, and regulatory experience will make it possible to fill the void. I'm sure all the teams are also hoping to broaden the market for fission power too; if they can show the ability to build reactors in reasonable timelines and with reasonable budgets and operability, it could happen. If not, these are likely to be the last generation of fission plants (aside from naval applications)
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    It's always been a problem that the current way we do reactors involves lots of one-off designs, with gigantic powerplants that require too much red tape to get finished in a reasonable time frame. Now instead of that have a small modular core that is certified to high heaven and can be mass produced. It would cut down maintenance, deployment, construction, everything. I truly think this is a fantastic way towards a net zero future.
- brandmeyer 5y ago
  None of the above. Smaller nuclear reactor projects are an effort to reduce the capital requirements to get started. There are inherent economies of scale in the physics which promote building larger reactors. Military propulsion reactors are < 1/10 the size of commercial power reactors today, and they are safe enough that we operate them with enlistees. But they are far too expensive for commercial operation.
loudthing 5y ago
"Britain last year backed a $546 million funding round at the company to develop the country's first small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), part of its drive to reach net zero carbon emissions and promote new technology with export potential." Cool. Although I foresee exporting this technology will be difficult as far as fuel and waste supply chain goes. Having the possibility of multiple new, smaller countries receive nuclear power makes moving fuel and waste across multiple borders more difficult. Also, protecting the technology so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands becomes more difficult as well (assuming these things can enrich uranium). "Each mini plant can power around one million homes...". This is where I did a spit take. I was really underestimating the capacity for these "mini" reactors. Being able to power so many homes (and being more centralized than I thought) means these reactors would still require huge infrastructure investment in order to spread the power.
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  > This is where I did a spit take. I was really underestimating the capacity for these "mini" reactors. Yeah, "mini" seems like it would be an order of magnitude less than the existing nuclear reactors. But the 470 MW mini reactor is just on the low side of current operational reactors which are in the 400 - 1200 MW range: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
  - moralestapia 5y ago
    More specs: Land footprint: ~2 football pitches [1] Cost: ~2.4 billion USD [2] 1:https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactor... 2:https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-secures-funding-for-SMR-deployment#:~:text=The%20target%20cost%20for%20each,operated%20by%20power%20generation%20companies https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-secu....
    - philipkglass 5y ago
      The second article says "The target cost for each station is GBP1.8 billion (USD2.4 billion) by the time five have been built, with further savings possible." This indicates that cost per station could be significantly higher before 5 of them have been built. It's reasonable to believe that doggedly continuing to build more of them will bring costs down eventually, but if early units have high costs (or worse, if build progress falls behind schedule) then it could be difficult to maintain support for building more of them.
roschdal 5y ago
Imagine the horrors when the Russians sets these reactors on fire :-O *why the downvotes? Security is a fatal flaw with nuclear energy.
- schaefer 5y ago
  I know, you're just joking about current events, but still... It would be nice if we could mention nuclear power projects without instantly brandishing fear, uncertainty, and doubt. after all, some studies attribute deaths from fossil fuel as high as 1 in 5 premature deaths! [1] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-kills-one-five-people https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-kills...
- somethoughts 5y ago
  I'd be curious to why this isn't an issue as well? I'd be really interested in a cogent description of how this isn't a concern. Taking out a small reactor from the air or some sort of inside job would be an obvious first target. The excuse would likely be similar to the one used in the current conflict that happened last week - "We just need to take it out to take critical 'infrastructure' offline." I think what makes it less worrisome is that the current aggressor has a lot to lose economically and also wants to occupy the area long term - so they were mostly operating in a safe manner. But if you had a group that had less to lose and had no intent on long term occupation - they could just go the destruction route. I could also see how it could easily lead to one upsmanship to real nuclear weaponry as it plays out in click heavy media news reporting - "Well they started us down the path by blowing up the nuclear reactor - so we'll need to counter that with some nuclear weapons..." So the real concern is about escalation in the event of conflict where decisions are made under duress and the public/politicians are not familiar with the details of nuclear energy safety and thus can easily be swayed.
  - blibble 5y ago
    at the point the russians are attacking UK nuclear reactors we're already in a hot nuclear war
avs733 5y ago
Obligatory...not the car brand This is the aerospace/power/transportation rolls royce: https://www.rolls-royce.com/ https://www.rolls-royce.com/ This is the car brand: https://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/en_US/home.html https://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/en_US/home.html
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  The car brand is a BMW subsidiary.
- kitd 5y ago
  More pertinently, it's the brand that produces the nuclear power plants on Britain's submarine fleet: https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/submarines.aspx https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/su...
- mywittyname 5y ago
  RR is the British equivalent of GE.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Or Mitsubishi.
sh4rks 5y ago
I feel stupid for thinking these would be used to power car engines.
- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  Rolls Royce hasn’t produced cars in years. They sold their brand and factory to BMW. They’re a jet engine manufacturer though.
  - aunty_helen 5y ago
    Along with being one of the big 3 turbine manufacturers, they also do a lot of military and marine stuff. This nuclear tech fits their business as the Vanguard submarines are powered by RR reactors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard-class_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard-class_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_PWR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_PWR
- WithinReason 5y ago
  Like in Fallout? One can dream...
  - orangepurple 5y ago
    Or infinite batteries in A Roadside Picnic
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    Ford Nucleon
zeruch 5y ago
I still haven't seen a canonical bit of (non lobbyist funded) ROI that shows that same dollar investment isn't better spent on alternate means (varies by nation of course but by and large some combo of renewables for most geos seems a better bet, and less of an environmental AND security risk).
- parineum 5y ago
  You may not have seen it but Rolls-Royce is a company looking to make money building these things. You can assume they have done this research.
  - mateo1 5y ago
    Their reasearch: "If we lobby really hard, get someone's political career tied to the success of our project and sink enough public funds into this so backing out is no longer considered an option, we'll make tons of money. p=0.05 btw"
    - parineum 5y ago
      Why wouldn't you lobby to get public funds _and_ do something that can actually sell mass market?
      - scaramanga 5y ago
        Because one of those is difficult.
    - kitd 5y ago
      Their research includes producing the nuclear power plants on the UK's submarines btw: https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/submarines.aspx https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/su...
  - zeruch 5y ago
    RR deciding to lobby in the UK for business where they have few competitors (versus in renewables where their competitive landscape is considerable and growing by the quarter) doesn't seem like an ROI I buy into, much as Phillip Morris' "scientific research" into the effects of smoking on lung cancer didn't seem altogether self-serving.
bdcravens 5y ago
Am I the only one who thought about Mr. Fusion?
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Nah it's the other one that needed fuel from Libyans.
olivermarks 5y ago
I'm a big fan of this project. Once they actually get going it will be possible to get costs down, as has happened with actual EV and battery production, rather than R&D theory and experiments. Until it all becomes reality the costings will initially be high and then practical knowledge and economies of scale will bring them down fast.
sandGorgon 5y ago
anyone know what is the difference between what Rolls Royce is building and Terrapower ? It seemed there's widespread criticism of Terrapower's modular nuclear reactor https://www.dw.com/en/scientists-pour-cold-water-on-bill-gates-nuclear-plans/a-59751405 https://www.dw.com/en/scientists-pour-cold-water-on-bill-gat...
- Ergo19 5y ago
  Sodium-cooled reactors do not have much of a track record, and what there is fairly negative. https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/spent-fuel-the-risky-resurgence-of-nuclear-power/ https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/spent-fuel-the-risky-res...
jollybean 5y ago
Thank you Putin for helping us to move away from fossil fuels.
- folli 5y ago
  Nuclear power can be considered a fossil fuel, as it relies on non-renewable metals for fusion.
  - azornathogron 5y ago
    The term "fossil fuel" is not (and never has been) a synonym for "non-renewable". Nuclear power is non-renewable, but it is not a fossil fuel.
  - isomel 5y ago
    1. A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material. The fuel used for nuclear doesn't fit that description. 2. We're talking about fission, not fusion 3. We have enough of these non-renewable metals for a very long time.
  - maximus-decimus 5y ago
    Solar power is also non-renewable since the sun will run out in 5 billion years.
qwertox 5y ago
So let's assume 10 of these got deployed, and then one of them develops a problem. No explosion, just something which could evolve into a serious issue if not taken care of within a couple of months. This would mean that all the 9 other reactors would have to be shut down until the root cause has been fixed, due to regulations. That is 10 million homes which will require a relatively quick alternative source of energy, for around one year. Is this a problem? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. But for some reason this would appear to increase the probability of failures of the overall deployed MW capacity by all these systems together.
- blibble 5y ago
  reactors share a design at present has this sort of co-ordinated shutdown ever happened before in the history of the nuclear industry? because I don't think it has
  - olau 5y ago
    Yes, of course it has. I'm certainly not an expert, but the plants are operating on a set of risk calculations based on assumptions about their designs. If one of the safety assumptions are challenged, you have to shut the reactors down and address it. Now, I'm sure you can find instances where this was not done. But if you just vaguely follow nuclear news around the world, nuclear power plants do indeed have correlated shutdowns. The most widely reported one in the past decade probably started with the accident at the Fukushima power plant. But there are many examples of smaller ones.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  Sizewell c is 3200mw. So if that goes offline you have effectively 7 RR reactors offline. This is why design, commissioning and testing of nuclear power plants is so crucial
- pjc50 5y ago
  > due to regulations [citation needed]: which regulations of which country? The French nuclear fleet has a problem with cracks, but they've only shut down the affected reactors. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/France-Closes-Two-Nuclear-Plants-After-Finding-Cracks-In-The-Infrastructure.html https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/France-Cl... Heck, they kept one of the Chernobyl units online for years after the other one blew up, because they needed the power.
Gwypaas 5y ago
THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS > The dream of small nuclear reactors did not die with the 1960s. In the 1980s, the nuclear industry was reeling from high cost and schedule overruns in reactor construction that had begun in the previous decade. And so, proponents of nuclear power circled back to the idea of going small. > A 1983 paper in the journal by analyst Joe Egan offered his vision of small, prefabricated reactors. “A novel, factory-based approach to manufacturing reactors under 400-MWe size may alleviate many of the pragmatic constraints on nuclear business,” he wrote, suggesting that “prefabrication and standardization of major plant components could lower dollar-per-kilowatt capital costs to levels now boasted by 1,000-MW models.” Such factory assembly could further reduce costs, he wrote, by reducing regulation, shortening construction times, and avoiding quality issues with components. > “The reactors, once assembled on barges (or even railroad cars, in one case), would be floated across oceans, up rivers, or be carted cross-country to operating sites,” Egan added. “There, purchasers would anchor the plants and simply ‘turn the key’ for 200–400 MWe of instant power.” > This vision never materialized. No turnkey reactors were carted cross-country or floated up rivers. Then, as earlier, they were deemed too expensive. Sadly, the nuclear industry continues to practice selective remembrance and to push ideas that haven’t worked. Once again, we see history repeating itself in today’s claims for small reactors—that the demand will be large, that they will be cheap and quick to construct. > But nothing in the history of small nuclear reactors suggests that they would be more economical than full-size ones. In fact, the record is pretty clear: Without exception, small reactors cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance. In the end, as an analyst for General Electric pronounced in 1966, “Nuclear power is a big-plant business: it is most competitive in the large plant sizes.” And if large nuclear reactors are not competitive, it is unlikely that small reactors will do any better. Worse, attempts to make them cheaper might end up exacerbating nuclear power’s other problems: production of long-lived radioactive waste, linkage with nuclear weapons, and the occasional catastrophic accident https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... I wonder if this is simply a bid to keep a nuclear industry in Britain for the naval reactors and as a planting ground for people going into nuclear weapons research?
Aardwolf 5y ago
Ok so it's not a car, but it does remind me of the ones in "Fallout" and the real life concept car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
yodelshady 5y ago
$500 M feels like the sweet spot for me actually. It's enough you can actually do something useful, unlike say "fusion never", but it's no so much as to be unauditable. If RR can't produce some goods with that amount (and, institutionally, they have the technical competence), you can ask why.
daviddumenil 5y ago
The GDA process for for the Chinese-developed reactor planned for the UK [1] took four and a half years [2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradwell_B_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradwell_B_nuclear_power_stati... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One
bjourne 5y ago
A Swedish professor Janne Wallenius recently got a government grant of 100 msek for building the same thing. But his smr is lead-cooled and supposedly much safer than a pwr reactor which can overheat. The advantages are supposedly the same as with Rolls-Royce's reactor; low construction-costs due to standardized design. In a recent interview he stated that his design could be ready for mass-production in the mid 2030's.
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Too late.
nonrandomstring 5y ago
I'm interested in the "modular" aspect here. It's not so clear what this means, but my must hopeful take is: - core technology can be switched (pop in a thorium core when it's available, leaving all the cooling, turbines and electrical as is) - better maintenance, swap out parts with short downtimes - interoperability, add a cooling system from another manufacturer like TeraPower or even a Chinese or Russian firm (after this war nonsense ends). If we're going to counter climate change with nuclear it must be a global effort. - easier, safer decommissioning. No need to carefully demolish 5 acre concrete bunker sites, just tow away old parts for disposal at a safe place. Anyone know what "modular" really means in this context?
- sephamorr 5y ago
  I think the biggest contributor is shrinking the size of the engineering effort. The cost scaling curve for large infrastructure projects is often not beneficial - the idea is that a (50%) smaller reactor requires substantially smaller containment, on-site development, etc, which should reduce costs by far more than 50%. More parts can be build in a factory rather than on-site, and higher unit volumes can support a learning curve.
- gendal 5y ago
  None of the above. AFAIK, 'modular' here is shorthand for '(mostly) assembled on site from modules made in factories'. The idea is that if you can transform nuclear build-out from a civil engineering problem into a manufacturing problem you can massively lower costs if/when you reach some level of scale.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    That was the same song Westinghouse was singing. It ended catastrophically.
    - tinco 5y ago
      No it didn't. "Westinghouse Electric Company would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of US$9 billion of losses from nuclear reactor construction projects. The projects responsible for this loss are mostly the construction of four AP1000 reactors." "As of 2019 all four AP1000 reactors in China are operating." Westinghouse made a large amount of mistakes in their designs, suffered through political climate because of the Fukushima incident and economic hardship because of the ridiculously low gas prices. How can you reduce that basically to that they tried to mass produce power plants, that was dumb so they failed? And where's the catastrophe?
Jenz 5y ago
It's unclear to me, exactly how they intend to use these.
roenxi 5y ago
These moves should probably be considered in context of the UK's collapsed/collapsing ability to produce energy [0]. These stats are a bit laggy, but it looks like they're being choked out of any sort of industrial relevance to anything. It is hard for me to imagine how that doesn't translate into a crisis of living standards. Either they're directly losing the ability to secure people comfortable lives, or they are losing the ability to export valuable products and becoming more vulnerable to foreign pressure. They literally can't have goods and services without energy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#O... - the table here is a jaw dropper, looks like they are deindustrialising.
- orf 5y ago
  Household energy usage has decreased a lot, especially with the push for more efficient household appliances, lighting and better insulation. During this time some power-hungry industry has closed, and we shuttered basically all of our coal power plants.
- bpye 5y ago
  The U.K. is primarily a services based economy, I think it is conceivable that the economy can grow whilst energy consumption decreases if you’re seeing a transition from manufacturing and heavy industry to commercial and services.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    And in a wartime era in a world that is de-globalizing, how does that strategy play out for a country?
    - encoderer 5y ago
      Rolling blackouts.
    - pfdietz 5y ago
      How would going nuclear help compete against renewable-powered industry in much sunnier places than the UK? Europe's industrial growth was based on fossil fuels. In a post fossil age, it's not a great place for industry.
Qub3d 5y ago
https://archive.ph/O5EFA https://archive.ph/O5EFA
LightG 5y ago
Let's multiply the geographic spread of nuclear waste, multiply and spread thinly the amount of security needed to protect these sites, and fall into a government story after the disaster of Brexit. A tip for international readers, the UK is currently captured by the worst government in a generation and it is inherently untrustworthy. Spraying $546m at a "profile-lifting" project is nothing to a government that will waste billions at the behest of Tory donors without a second thought. I'll classify this under "R&D puff piece that will likely amount to nothing, or a loss", like nearly everything else the current UK government has done.
- scaramanga 5y ago
  Well the worst-case is that it "succeeds" in which case we dump a lot of money that could be better spent on seriously addressing climate change. Instead we construct new security hazards to rear their heads during whatever societal disintegration we face as climate change, the rising tide of fascism, economic mismanagement, and the lawless global system of competing blood-thirsty imperial blocs, converge down to a point. I worry that if humanity survives all this, a thousand years from now, as new civilisations form out of the ashes, what problems they're still going to be left with.
Melatonic 5y ago
So can we assemble one of these on the moon already?
gautamdivgi 5y ago
Who else saw the title and thought that the cars were going to have nuclear reactors for their fuel?
- livinglist 5y ago
  I was thinking about that as well….
fortran77 5y ago
Which models of Rolls-Royce will this be available in? I'd love to be the first on my block with a nuclear-powered Phantom or Dawn!
- leephillips 5y ago
  Sadly, the Ford Nucleon never made it to market.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    Imagine the millions of car accidents each year, but every single one has a risk of radioactive meltdown.
mchusma 5y ago
France went 100% nuclear power in basically 15 years. I'd love to see the current conflict catalyze action here. Aggressive fission growth is the only way to fast track clean energy independence for most countries.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  And France has a lot of trouble right now because they can't sustain it.
  - account4mypc 5y ago
    what do you mean? i'm curious to learn more about this
    - bayesian_horse 5y ago
      A large portion of their plants is offline at any time. For various reasons, some regular maintenance, some not so regular, some safety related. For me the big takeaway is that the reliability and safety on paper is never the complete picture, even before unforeseen accidents or malice eventually do happen. Another problem was that recruitment and education of nuclear engineers isn't going that well either.
Tozen 5y ago
I like it, because the world is not going to reduce its suicidal dependency on fossil fuels with just renewable energy (solar, wind, tidal...). Safe(r) and cheaper nuclear reactors could bridge the gap. But, I do wish the development of thorium based nuclear reactors would be accelerated, so we can stop with the primarily uranium nuclear reactors that have the capacity of dual use for helping to make nuclear weapons (which the world has enough of). Additionally, thorium is safer.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Nuclear energy isn't scalable in either the long or short term. The renewable energy route is faster than wishing for thorium based technology. Most countries are just not in a position to scale up their nuclear industry, and extremely reluctant to do so. It is a lot harder to get rid of all that industry when you are done with it, than with any fossil based plants built to bridge the gap. All of that leaves out considerations like a neighbor invading your country and trying to blow up your shit.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    Don't call it a nuclear reactor, but sustainable salt energy
  - Tozen 5y ago
    Thorium isn't "pie in the sky", it's very doable (https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-closing-in-on-thorium-nuclear-reactor https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-closing-in-on-thorium-nuclea...). The issue was that thorium was abandoned by the U.S. and other countries, because uranium nuclear reactors (despite their greater dangers) have dual use, and can be used for creating nuclear weapons. Other countries followed the U.S. example, thus we must live with these greater dangers. If not from nuclear accidents or sabotage (or stray bullets), from unfriendly countries having disguised nuclear weapon production programs. Plain and simple, we don't need more nuclear weapons or more nuclear armed countries, as we can destroy this planet several times over. Nor do we need more dangerous nuclear waste or fear of catastrophic accidents. Thorium reactors don't lend themselves to nuclear weapons production, and reduces the waste dangers. And it doesn't have to be thorium, but we can as least build them safer and smarter. Nuclear power can be great for humankind, if we harnessed it more safely, to include using it on our moon, Mars, and beyond. On Earth, thorium is a safer and possible alternative. We need to get over our fossil fuel suicidal addiction, sooner, rather than later. Renewables are great, but its going to take us more time to get where we need to be, so nuclear power can help get us there faster.
acd10j 5y ago
Hopefully something good likes this comes out of this war. Wars historically has removed lots of institutional inertia due to humans survival instincts.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Well, seeing fires at the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, as a European, didn't actually make me think "God I wish we had more of these things everywhere!"
bayesian_horse 5y ago
What can possibly go wrong? The conflict in Ukraine just reminded me how really unsafe urban areas can be for nuclear energy. If Ukraine isn't a safe place to build nuclear reactors without somebody trying to blow them up (or doing so accidentally), then no part of Africa and large parts of South America and Asia are neither. And there goes much of the idea of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy...

452 points by leephillips 5y ago

It will be safe, quick, clean, cheap and efficient. They just need 500bn to build the first part of the first one, 50 years to plan it, a huge liability cover and unlimited cleanup support.

dazbradbury 5y ago

Are the various "small" nuclear reactor projects seen as a way to tide over the gap until fusion (which has a similar number of startups and organisations working on it) takes over? Or a bet that fusion won't be feasible in the end? Or are they seen as filling different gaps and co-existing longer term?

aeontech 5y ago
I think small reactors are proven to be feasible now, and can be producing energy in short term. Fusion is a longer-term bet – it's probably coming, but there's no certainty on the timeline.
dmitrygr 5y ago
Even if fusion is feasible, it will not solve the problems people keep hoping it will. 1. Proliferation. A thorium reactor already has no proliferation risks 2. Costs. LOL. At least 2000 years to recoup the R&D, and then OpEx still exists 3. Fuel availability. Thorium. Reactor. 4. Waste. Where do you think all those neutrons will go? The container. which will slowly become radioactive as you transmute it thus... IT will also become brittle and need replacement. It is ... nuclear waste. Radioactive and in need of storage. Also: a thorium reactor can use existing nuclear waste to for a while it'll REDUCE amount of waste we have to deal with The one and only thing fusion does have going for it: at least IN THEORY it might be possible to do on a space ship by collecting interstellar gas. Not much heavy isotopes there but plenty oh H and some He
- philipkglass 5y ago
  Thorium reactors still have proliferation risks. See this explanation written by physicist and HN commenter acidburnNSA: https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth3 https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html#myth3
- soperj 5y ago
  There's already a reactor that can do this (CANDU reactor), and has been operational for decades, no research required. That there is little new investment in building them tells me that no one really cares about reducing the amount of nuclear waste, and that it's all very political.
  - retrac 5y ago
    Yep. Ontario's power reactors can (and have!) run on plain uranium, partially depleted uranium "waste" from American power reactors, and my favourite: a mix of depleted uranium and ex-Soviet warhead plutonium [1]. A thorium breeding cycle is also possible, in theory with CANDU and it's actually being done with India's heavy water pressurized reactors using thorium, which are an indirect derivative. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russian-plutonium-one-step-closer-to-canada-1.235704 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/russian-plutonium-one-step-cl...
nicoburns 5y ago
Fusion isn't proven yet, so government can't really plan for it. Even if it does arrive, nobody knows when that might be. It could easily be in 100 years for all we know. Small nuclear reactors are seen as a way to get the benefits of fission at lower cost.
bpodgursky 5y ago
There's not really that level of central planning going on here (and IMO that's a good thing).
loeg 5y ago
Neither? Fusion is not feasible right now, and we need power now. It doesn’t really matter whether fusion eventually becomes viable. Fission is fine for the long term; fusion would also be fine, if it eventually worked.
zucker42 5y ago
Metaculus indicates that the first fusion plant may not be online until the 2040s[1]. We shouldn't be not building lower carbon energy infrastructure now with the idea that fusion will save us. [1] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/363/will-a-fusion-based-electrical-generation-facility-generation-100-mw-or-more-using-only-fusion-as-an-energy-source-come-into-service-by-2030/ https://www.metaculus.com/questions/363/will-a-fusion-based-...
toast0 5y ago
I think all of these projects are coming together primarily to replace the existing nuclear plants. As the older plants reach the end of their operational life, there's still a desire for fission power; building a new plant with the old designs doesn't work for a lot of reasons, so hopefully new designs that take into account 40-60 years of operational, construction, and regulatory experience will make it possible to fill the void. I'm sure all the teams are also hoping to broaden the market for fission power too; if they can show the ability to build reactors in reasonable timelines and with reasonable budgets and operability, it could happen. If not, these are likely to be the last generation of fission plants (aside from naval applications)
- moffkalast 5y ago
  It's always been a problem that the current way we do reactors involves lots of one-off designs, with gigantic powerplants that require too much red tape to get finished in a reasonable time frame. Now instead of that have a small modular core that is certified to high heaven and can be mass produced. It would cut down maintenance, deployment, construction, everything. I truly think this is a fantastic way towards a net zero future.
brandmeyer 5y ago
None of the above. Smaller nuclear reactor projects are an effort to reduce the capital requirements to get started. There are inherent economies of scale in the physics which promote building larger reactors. Military propulsion reactors are < 1/10 the size of commercial power reactors today, and they are safe enough that we operate them with enlistees. But they are far too expensive for commercial operation.

loudthing 5y ago

"Britain last year backed a $546 million funding round at the company to develop the country's first small modular nuclear reactor (SMR), part of its drive to reach net zero carbon emissions and promote new technology with export potential." Cool. Although I foresee exporting this technology will be difficult as far as fuel and waste supply chain goes. Having the possibility of multiple new, smaller countries receive nuclear power makes moving fuel and waste across multiple borders more difficult. Also, protecting the technology so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands becomes more difficult as well (assuming these things can enrich uranium). "Each mini plant can power around one million homes...". This is where I did a spit take. I was really underestimating the capacity for these "mini" reactors. Being able to power so many homes (and being more centralized than I thought) means these reactors would still require huge infrastructure investment in order to spread the power.

dr_orpheus 5y ago
> This is where I did a spit take. I was really underestimating the capacity for these "mini" reactors. Yeah, "mini" seems like it would be an order of magnitude less than the existing nuclear reactors. But the 470 MW mini reactor is just on the low side of current operational reactors which are in the 400 - 1200 MW range: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...
- moralestapia 5y ago
  More specs: Land footprint: ~2 football pitches [1] Cost: ~2.4 billion USD [2] 1:https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactor... 2:https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-secures-funding-for-SMR-deployment#:~:text=The%20target%20cost%20for%20each,operated%20by%20power%20generation%20companies https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-secu....
  - philipkglass 5y ago
    The second article says "The target cost for each station is GBP1.8 billion (USD2.4 billion) by the time five have been built, with further savings possible." This indicates that cost per station could be significantly higher before 5 of them have been built. It's reasonable to believe that doggedly continuing to build more of them will bring costs down eventually, but if early units have high costs (or worse, if build progress falls behind schedule) then it could be difficult to maintain support for building more of them.

roschdal 5y ago

Imagine the horrors when the Russians sets these reactors on fire :-O *why the downvotes? Security is a fatal flaw with nuclear energy.

schaefer 5y ago
I know, you're just joking about current events, but still... It would be nice if we could mention nuclear power projects without instantly brandishing fear, uncertainty, and doubt. after all, some studies attribute deaths from fossil fuel as high as 1 in 5 premature deaths! [1] https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-kills-one-five-people https://www.nrdc.org/stories/fossil-fuel-air-pollution-kills...
somethoughts 5y ago
I'd be curious to why this isn't an issue as well? I'd be really interested in a cogent description of how this isn't a concern. Taking out a small reactor from the air or some sort of inside job would be an obvious first target. The excuse would likely be similar to the one used in the current conflict that happened last week - "We just need to take it out to take critical 'infrastructure' offline." I think what makes it less worrisome is that the current aggressor has a lot to lose economically and also wants to occupy the area long term - so they were mostly operating in a safe manner. But if you had a group that had less to lose and had no intent on long term occupation - they could just go the destruction route. I could also see how it could easily lead to one upsmanship to real nuclear weaponry as it plays out in click heavy media news reporting - "Well they started us down the path by blowing up the nuclear reactor - so we'll need to counter that with some nuclear weapons..." So the real concern is about escalation in the event of conflict where decisions are made under duress and the public/politicians are not familiar with the details of nuclear energy safety and thus can easily be swayed.
- blibble 5y ago
  at the point the russians are attacking UK nuclear reactors we're already in a hot nuclear war

avs733 5y ago

Obligatory...not the car brand This is the aerospace/power/transportation rolls royce: https://www.rolls-royce.com/ https://www.rolls-royce.com/ This is the car brand: https://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/en_US/home.html https://www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/en_US/home.html

8ytecoder 5y ago
The car brand is a BMW subsidiary.
kitd 5y ago
More pertinently, it's the brand that produces the nuclear power plants on Britain's submarine fleet: https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/submarines.aspx https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/su...
mywittyname 5y ago
RR is the British equivalent of GE.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Or Mitsubishi.

sh4rks 5y ago

I feel stupid for thinking these would be used to power car engines.

8ytecoder 5y ago
Rolls Royce hasn’t produced cars in years. They sold their brand and factory to BMW. They’re a jet engine manufacturer though.
- aunty_helen 5y ago
  Along with being one of the big 3 turbine manufacturers, they also do a lot of military and marine stuff. This nuclear tech fits their business as the Vanguard submarines are powered by RR reactors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard-class_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard-class_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_PWR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_PWR
WithinReason 5y ago
Like in Fallout? One can dream...
- orangepurple 5y ago
  Or infinite batteries in A Roadside Picnic
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Ford Nucleon

zeruch 5y ago

I still haven't seen a canonical bit of (non lobbyist funded) ROI that shows that same dollar investment isn't better spent on alternate means (varies by nation of course but by and large some combo of renewables for most geos seems a better bet, and less of an environmental AND security risk).

parineum 5y ago
You may not have seen it but Rolls-Royce is a company looking to make money building these things. You can assume they have done this research.
- mateo1 5y ago
  Their reasearch: "If we lobby really hard, get someone's political career tied to the success of our project and sink enough public funds into this so backing out is no longer considered an option, we'll make tons of money. p=0.05 btw"
  - parineum 5y ago
    Why wouldn't you lobby to get public funds _and_ do something that can actually sell mass market?
    - scaramanga 5y ago
      Because one of those is difficult.
  - kitd 5y ago
    Their research includes producing the nuclear power plants on the UK's submarines btw: https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/submarines.aspx https://www.rolls-royce.com/products-and-services/defence/su...
- zeruch 5y ago
  RR deciding to lobby in the UK for business where they have few competitors (versus in renewables where their competitive landscape is considerable and growing by the quarter) doesn't seem like an ROI I buy into, much as Phillip Morris' "scientific research" into the effects of smoking on lung cancer didn't seem altogether self-serving.

bdcravens 5y ago

Am I the only one who thought about Mr. Fusion?

moffkalast 5y ago
Nah it's the other one that needed fuel from Libyans.

olivermarks 5y ago

I'm a big fan of this project. Once they actually get going it will be possible to get costs down, as has happened with actual EV and battery production, rather than R&D theory and experiments. Until it all becomes reality the costings will initially be high and then practical knowledge and economies of scale will bring them down fast.

sandGorgon 5y ago

anyone know what is the difference between what Rolls Royce is building and Terrapower ? It seemed there's widespread criticism of Terrapower's modular nuclear reactor https://www.dw.com/en/scientists-pour-cold-water-on-bill-gates-nuclear-plans/a-59751405 https://www.dw.com/en/scientists-pour-cold-water-on-bill-gat...

Ergo19 5y ago
Sodium-cooled reactors do not have much of a track record, and what there is fairly negative. https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/spent-fuel-the-risky-resurgence-of-nuclear-power/ https://harpers.org/archive/2022/01/spent-fuel-the-risky-res...

jollybean 5y ago

Thank you Putin for helping us to move away from fossil fuels.

folli 5y ago
Nuclear power can be considered a fossil fuel, as it relies on non-renewable metals for fusion.
- azornathogron 5y ago
  The term "fossil fuel" is not (and never has been) a synonym for "non-renewable". Nuclear power is non-renewable, but it is not a fossil fuel.
- isomel 5y ago
  1. A fossil fuel is a hydrocarbon-containing material. The fuel used for nuclear doesn't fit that description. 2. We're talking about fission, not fusion 3. We have enough of these non-renewable metals for a very long time.
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  Solar power is also non-renewable since the sun will run out in 5 billion years.

qwertox 5y ago

So let's assume 10 of these got deployed, and then one of them develops a problem. No explosion, just something which could evolve into a serious issue if not taken care of within a couple of months. This would mean that all the 9 other reactors would have to be shut down until the root cause has been fixed, due to regulations. That is 10 million homes which will require a relatively quick alternative source of energy, for around one year. Is this a problem? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. But for some reason this would appear to increase the probability of failures of the overall deployed MW capacity by all these systems together.

blibble 5y ago
reactors share a design at present has this sort of co-ordinated shutdown ever happened before in the history of the nuclear industry? because I don't think it has
- olau 5y ago
  Yes, of course it has. I'm certainly not an expert, but the plants are operating on a set of risk calculations based on assumptions about their designs. If one of the safety assumptions are challenged, you have to shut the reactors down and address it. Now, I'm sure you can find instances where this was not done. But if you just vaguely follow nuclear news around the world, nuclear power plants do indeed have correlated shutdowns. The most widely reported one in the past decade probably started with the accident at the Fukushima power plant. But there are many examples of smaller ones.
KaiserPro 5y ago
Sizewell c is 3200mw. So if that goes offline you have effectively 7 RR reactors offline. This is why design, commissioning and testing of nuclear power plants is so crucial
pjc50 5y ago
> due to regulations [citation needed]: which regulations of which country? The French nuclear fleet has a problem with cracks, but they've only shut down the affected reactors. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/France-Closes-Two-Nuclear-Plants-After-Finding-Cracks-In-The-Infrastructure.html https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/France-Cl... Heck, they kept one of the Chernobyl units online for years after the other one blew up, because they needed the power.

Gwypaas 5y ago

THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF SMALL NUCLEAR REACTORS > The dream of small nuclear reactors did not die with the 1960s. In the 1980s, the nuclear industry was reeling from high cost and schedule overruns in reactor construction that had begun in the previous decade. And so, proponents of nuclear power circled back to the idea of going small. > A 1983 paper in the journal by analyst Joe Egan offered his vision of small, prefabricated reactors. “A novel, factory-based approach to manufacturing reactors under 400-MWe size may alleviate many of the pragmatic constraints on nuclear business,” he wrote, suggesting that “prefabrication and standardization of major plant components could lower dollar-per-kilowatt capital costs to levels now boasted by 1,000-MW models.” Such factory assembly could further reduce costs, he wrote, by reducing regulation, shortening construction times, and avoiding quality issues with components. > “The reactors, once assembled on barges (or even railroad cars, in one case), would be floated across oceans, up rivers, or be carted cross-country to operating sites,” Egan added. “There, purchasers would anchor the plants and simply ‘turn the key’ for 200–400 MWe of instant power.” > This vision never materialized. No turnkey reactors were carted cross-country or floated up rivers. Then, as earlier, they were deemed too expensive. Sadly, the nuclear industry continues to practice selective remembrance and to push ideas that haven’t worked. Once again, we see history repeating itself in today’s claims for small reactors—that the demand will be large, that they will be cheap and quick to construct. > But nothing in the history of small nuclear reactors suggests that they would be more economical than full-size ones. In fact, the record is pretty clear: Without exception, small reactors cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance. In the end, as an analyst for General Electric pronounced in 1966, “Nuclear power is a big-plant business: it is most competitive in the large plant sizes.” And if large nuclear reactors are not competitive, it is unlikely that small reactors will do any better. Worse, attempts to make them cheaper might end up exacerbating nuclear power’s other problems: production of long-lived radioactive waste, linkage with nuclear weapons, and the occasional catastrophic accident https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... I wonder if this is simply a bid to keep a nuclear industry in Britain for the naval reactors and as a planting ground for people going into nuclear weapons research?

Aardwolf 5y ago

Ok so it's not a car, but it does remind me of the ones in "Fallout" and the real life concept car: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

yodelshady 5y ago

$500 M feels like the sweet spot for me actually. It's enough you can actually do something useful, unlike say "fusion never", but it's no so much as to be unauditable. If RR can't produce some goods with that amount (and, institutionally, they have the technical competence), you can ask why.

daviddumenil 5y ago

The GDA process for for the Chinese-developed reactor planned for the UK [1] took four and a half years [2] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradwell_B_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradwell_B_nuclear_power_stati... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hualong_One

bjourne 5y ago

A Swedish professor Janne Wallenius recently got a government grant of 100 msek for building the same thing. But his smr is lead-cooled and supposedly much safer than a pwr reactor which can overheat. The advantages are supposedly the same as with Rolls-Royce's reactor; low construction-costs due to standardized design. In a recent interview he stated that his design could be ready for mass-production in the mid 2030's.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago
Too late.

nonrandomstring 5y ago

I'm interested in the "modular" aspect here. It's not so clear what this means, but my must hopeful take is: - core technology can be switched (pop in a thorium core when it's available, leaving all the cooling, turbines and electrical as is) - better maintenance, swap out parts with short downtimes - interoperability, add a cooling system from another manufacturer like TeraPower or even a Chinese or Russian firm (after this war nonsense ends). If we're going to counter climate change with nuclear it must be a global effort. - easier, safer decommissioning. No need to carefully demolish 5 acre concrete bunker sites, just tow away old parts for disposal at a safe place. Anyone know what "modular" really means in this context?

sephamorr 5y ago
I think the biggest contributor is shrinking the size of the engineering effort. The cost scaling curve for large infrastructure projects is often not beneficial - the idea is that a (50%) smaller reactor requires substantially smaller containment, on-site development, etc, which should reduce costs by far more than 50%. More parts can be build in a factory rather than on-site, and higher unit volumes can support a learning curve.
gendal 5y ago
None of the above. AFAIK, 'modular' here is shorthand for '(mostly) assembled on site from modules made in factories'. The idea is that if you can transform nuclear build-out from a civil engineering problem into a manufacturing problem you can massively lower costs if/when you reach some level of scale.
- pfdietz 5y ago
  That was the same song Westinghouse was singing. It ended catastrophically.
  - tinco 5y ago
    No it didn't. "Westinghouse Electric Company would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy because of US$9 billion of losses from nuclear reactor construction projects. The projects responsible for this loss are mostly the construction of four AP1000 reactors." "As of 2019 all four AP1000 reactors in China are operating." Westinghouse made a large amount of mistakes in their designs, suffered through political climate because of the Fukushima incident and economic hardship because of the ridiculously low gas prices. How can you reduce that basically to that they tried to mass produce power plants, that was dumb so they failed? And where's the catastrophe?

Jenz 5y ago

It's unclear to me, exactly how they intend to use these.

roenxi 5y ago

These moves should probably be considered in context of the UK's collapsed/collapsing ability to produce energy [0]. These stats are a bit laggy, but it looks like they're being choked out of any sort of industrial relevance to anything. It is hard for me to imagine how that doesn't translate into a crisis of living standards. Either they're directly losing the ability to secure people comfortable lives, or they are losing the ability to export valuable products and becoming more vulnerable to foreign pressure. They literally can't have goods and services without energy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#O... - the table here is a jaw dropper, looks like they are deindustrialising.

orf 5y ago
Household energy usage has decreased a lot, especially with the push for more efficient household appliances, lighting and better insulation. During this time some power-hungry industry has closed, and we shuttered basically all of our coal power plants.
bpye 5y ago
The U.K. is primarily a services based economy, I think it is conceivable that the economy can grow whilst energy consumption decreases if you’re seeing a transition from manufacturing and heavy industry to commercial and services.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  And in a wartime era in a world that is de-globalizing, how does that strategy play out for a country?
  - encoderer 5y ago
    Rolling blackouts.
  - pfdietz 5y ago
    How would going nuclear help compete against renewable-powered industry in much sunnier places than the UK? Europe's industrial growth was based on fossil fuels. In a post fossil age, it's not a great place for industry.

Qub3d 5y ago

https://archive.ph/O5EFA https://archive.ph/O5EFA

LightG 5y ago

Let's multiply the geographic spread of nuclear waste, multiply and spread thinly the amount of security needed to protect these sites, and fall into a government story after the disaster of Brexit. A tip for international readers, the UK is currently captured by the worst government in a generation and it is inherently untrustworthy. Spraying $546m at a "profile-lifting" project is nothing to a government that will waste billions at the behest of Tory donors without a second thought. I'll classify this under "R&D puff piece that will likely amount to nothing, or a loss", like nearly everything else the current UK government has done.

scaramanga 5y ago
Well the worst-case is that it "succeeds" in which case we dump a lot of money that could be better spent on seriously addressing climate change. Instead we construct new security hazards to rear their heads during whatever societal disintegration we face as climate change, the rising tide of fascism, economic mismanagement, and the lawless global system of competing blood-thirsty imperial blocs, converge down to a point. I worry that if humanity survives all this, a thousand years from now, as new civilisations form out of the ashes, what problems they're still going to be left with.

Melatonic 5y ago

So can we assemble one of these on the moon already?

gautamdivgi 5y ago

Who else saw the title and thought that the cars were going to have nuclear reactors for their fuel?

livinglist 5y ago
I was thinking about that as well….

fortran77 5y ago

Which models of Rolls-Royce will this be available in? I'd love to be the first on my block with a nuclear-powered Phantom or Dawn!

leephillips 5y ago
Sadly, the Ford Nucleon never made it to market.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Imagine the millions of car accidents each year, but every single one has a risk of radioactive meltdown.

mchusma 5y ago

France went 100% nuclear power in basically 15 years. I'd love to see the current conflict catalyze action here. Aggressive fission growth is the only way to fast track clean energy independence for most countries.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
And France has a lot of trouble right now because they can't sustain it.
- account4mypc 5y ago
  what do you mean? i'm curious to learn more about this
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    A large portion of their plants is offline at any time. For various reasons, some regular maintenance, some not so regular, some safety related. For me the big takeaway is that the reliability and safety on paper is never the complete picture, even before unforeseen accidents or malice eventually do happen. Another problem was that recruitment and education of nuclear engineers isn't going that well either.

Tozen 5y ago

I like it, because the world is not going to reduce its suicidal dependency on fossil fuels with just renewable energy (solar, wind, tidal...). Safe(r) and cheaper nuclear reactors could bridge the gap. But, I do wish the development of thorium based nuclear reactors would be accelerated, so we can stop with the primarily uranium nuclear reactors that have the capacity of dual use for helping to make nuclear weapons (which the world has enough of). Additionally, thorium is safer.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
Nuclear energy isn't scalable in either the long or short term. The renewable energy route is faster than wishing for thorium based technology. Most countries are just not in a position to scale up their nuclear industry, and extremely reluctant to do so. It is a lot harder to get rid of all that industry when you are done with it, than with any fossil based plants built to bridge the gap. All of that leaves out considerations like a neighbor invading your country and trying to blow up your shit.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  Don't call it a nuclear reactor, but sustainable salt energy
- Tozen 5y ago
  Thorium isn't "pie in the sky", it's very doable (https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-closing-in-on-thorium-nuclear-reactor https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-closing-in-on-thorium-nuclea...). The issue was that thorium was abandoned by the U.S. and other countries, because uranium nuclear reactors (despite their greater dangers) have dual use, and can be used for creating nuclear weapons. Other countries followed the U.S. example, thus we must live with these greater dangers. If not from nuclear accidents or sabotage (or stray bullets), from unfriendly countries having disguised nuclear weapon production programs. Plain and simple, we don't need more nuclear weapons or more nuclear armed countries, as we can destroy this planet several times over. Nor do we need more dangerous nuclear waste or fear of catastrophic accidents. Thorium reactors don't lend themselves to nuclear weapons production, and reduces the waste dangers. And it doesn't have to be thorium, but we can as least build them safer and smarter. Nuclear power can be great for humankind, if we harnessed it more safely, to include using it on our moon, Mars, and beyond. On Earth, thorium is a safer and possible alternative. We need to get over our fossil fuel suicidal addiction, sooner, rather than later. Renewables are great, but its going to take us more time to get where we need to be, so nuclear power can help get us there faster.

acd10j 5y ago

Hopefully something good likes this comes out of this war. Wars historically has removed lots of institutional inertia due to humans survival instincts.

bayesian_horse 5y ago
Well, seeing fires at the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe, as a European, didn't actually make me think "God I wish we had more of these things everywhere!"

bayesian_horse 5y ago

What can possibly go wrong? The conflict in Ukraine just reminded me how really unsafe urban areas can be for nuclear energy. If Ukraine isn't a safe place to build nuclear reactors without somebody trying to blow them up (or doing so accidentally), then no part of Africa and large parts of South America and Asia are neither. And there goes much of the idea of replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy...