3 ms·

Author here, AMA. This post got me introduced to Ira Flatow, and we discussed it on NPR's Science Friday a while back. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/

Author here, AMA. This post got me introduced to Ira Flatow, and we discussed it on NPR's Science Friday a while back. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-powe... I mentioned this in a thread yesterday when someone asked me what my favorite advanced reactor was. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463673 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463673 The huge crane being sold to China in 1990 is the sad ending of the story: https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/11/05/huge-crane-sold-to-china/ https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/11/05/huge-crane-sold-...

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Thank you for sharing! What a great article. As I read it I formulated several questions only for them to be clearly resolved as I read further. This is so often not the case. I would be interested in learning more. Is there one of the recent development projects that is more mature and likely to succeed than the others? Does the science Friday episode have additional information not included in the writeup?
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  Thanks for saying so. I'd say the writeup is more informative than the Science Friday piece, honestly. There are a few good modern reports about using his kind of idea for making ammonia and hydrogen, but nothing too serious is going on outside of Russia and China on this topic. [1] https://www.lucidcatalyst.com/hydrogen-report https://www.lucidcatalyst.com/hydrogen-report Most of the people talking about it in advanced reactor space are using very low readiness reactors rather than PWRs, which led me to make this extremely fringe starwars prequel meme: [2]. [2] https://i.imgur.com/bDaVjRY.png https://i.imgur.com/bDaVjRY.png The Koreans have the PWRs and the ship industry in place, they'd be the best to make this happen again. But so far they've just done a few small MOUs here and there. Again, nothing too serious is happening from what I can tell. I'd be happy to be wrong.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Thanks again!
photochemsyn 4y ago
Interesting article, but the relative cost of nuclear vs solar/wind/storage is why utility managers around the world are not that interesting in expanding their nuclear footprint. Often you'll see people argue that excessive regulation is what is driving costs up, but without a very high level of maintenance, nuclear power systems will inevitably have an unacceptable rate of failure. These safety margins need to be higher than those for units like oil refineries, coal-fired power plants etc., as the consequences of failure are so long-lasting (fires at oil refineries are relatively common, for example, but they don't result in 100-year no-go radioactive exclusion zones). Therefore, to make nuclear accidents highly unlikely, maintenance costs amd engineering standards will inevitably be much greater than in any other power supply system. This means nuclear will always cost significantly more than any other system - and this also applies to storage of too-hot-to-handle 'spent' nuclear fuel, as well as to the costs of eventual decommission. In addition, the nuclear fuel supply chain (high grade uranium ore -> fuel rods) is fairly complex, and subject to geopolitical and economic price spikes. All in all why would a utility manager these days looking at all the options for non-fossil-fuel power go with nuclear?
- acidburnNSA 4y ago
  On cost, the simple answer is that if fossil and biofuel had to pay for the air pollution health effects they cause (4.2 M deaths/year [1]) and the climate change damage they cause, then every utility would switch to nuclear for baseload immediately. The markets are incorrect in not capturing these costs. Nuclear is dramatically cheaper than fossil and biofuel on this basis alone in a real market. And of course the advantage of nuclear over wind and solar is that nuclear has a 92% capacity factor with fairly regular well-planned outages. The wind and solar costs you've seen, while stellar, do not include the costs of the backup generators and batteries, additional transmission to remote site, overcapacity required to charge the batteries at scale, etc etc. Nuclear is certainly on par with them in a fully decarbonized system. In any case, building nuclear alongside wind and solar makes the whole system cheaper [2]. Regarding 100 year no-go zones, the hottest areas I see around Fukushima today measure about 30 mSv/yr, which is about 2x higher than Denver's natural radiation. Japan is lifting even more evacuation orders as we speak [3]. If they gave people the proper information about the health risks (e.g. that you need more than 100 mSv in a year before the smallest measurable cancer increase can be seen) then people would have all moved back 10 years ago. [1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution [2] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006 [3] https://sp.m.jiji.com/english/show/19741 https://sp.m.jiji.com/english/show/19741
kkfx 4y ago
A small notes, with the premise that I favor nuclear in general, not only future hoped fusion if we will ever get it: we use electricity mostly on-shore, also deep inside land. Surely a water-born NPP can travel so can theoretically adapt to different needs, theoretically only since it still demand a land-based distribution network, surely a water-born NPP can be sunk easily in case of an emergency so it's safer BUT while I agree that due to climate change and social changes derived we need flexibility that means going via air and water instead of land since infra on land can't really be built and changed in quick enough time at a low enough costs with a low enough needs of natural resources and yes we can easily move stuff on the sea that on land, BUT we still live on land... Also for defense needs, where possible, we want critical industries, those who most need nuclear, deep inside land to better protect them to direct military attacks... Such floating power plants can be useful for a colonization where land can't be used like in the now melting Arctic areas where we can't safely built on soil due to it's continuous changes and we need to quickly develop infra there in a race for natural resources, they can be useful in some very seismic areas or for emergency usage in remote areas IF small enough and able to travel quickly enough (witch is unlikely) avoiding being too near the coastline to be safe in maritime terms but I fail to see other realistic usages... It seems a bit like the '70s nuclear-powered aircraft experiments, formally nice, but only in engineering terms, and they fails as expected...
h12nz 4y ago
My understanding is that naval reactors mostly (if not all?) require near-weapons grade uranium. Though I assume this is to allow a compact design. How highly enriched would it need to be in this case? Any more than current land-based civil designs?

s1artibartfast 4y ago

Thank you for sharing! What a great article. As I read it I formulated several questions only for them to be clearly resolved as I read further. This is so often not the case. I would be interested in learning more. Is there one of the recent development projects that is more mature and likely to succeed than the others? Does the science Friday episode have additional information not included in the writeup?

acidburnNSA 4y ago
Thanks for saying so. I'd say the writeup is more informative than the Science Friday piece, honestly. There are a few good modern reports about using his kind of idea for making ammonia and hydrogen, but nothing too serious is going on outside of Russia and China on this topic. [1] https://www.lucidcatalyst.com/hydrogen-report https://www.lucidcatalyst.com/hydrogen-report Most of the people talking about it in advanced reactor space are using very low readiness reactors rather than PWRs, which led me to make this extremely fringe starwars prequel meme: [2]. [2] https://i.imgur.com/bDaVjRY.png https://i.imgur.com/bDaVjRY.png The Koreans have the PWRs and the ship industry in place, they'd be the best to make this happen again. But so far they've just done a few small MOUs here and there. Again, nothing too serious is happening from what I can tell. I'd be happy to be wrong.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Thanks again!

photochemsyn 4y ago

Interesting article, but the relative cost of nuclear vs solar/wind/storage is why utility managers around the world are not that interesting in expanding their nuclear footprint. Often you'll see people argue that excessive regulation is what is driving costs up, but without a very high level of maintenance, nuclear power systems will inevitably have an unacceptable rate of failure. These safety margins need to be higher than those for units like oil refineries, coal-fired power plants etc., as the consequences of failure are so long-lasting (fires at oil refineries are relatively common, for example, but they don't result in 100-year no-go radioactive exclusion zones). Therefore, to make nuclear accidents highly unlikely, maintenance costs amd engineering standards will inevitably be much greater than in any other power supply system. This means nuclear will always cost significantly more than any other system - and this also applies to storage of too-hot-to-handle 'spent' nuclear fuel, as well as to the costs of eventual decommission. In addition, the nuclear fuel supply chain (high grade uranium ore -> fuel rods) is fairly complex, and subject to geopolitical and economic price spikes. All in all why would a utility manager these days looking at all the options for non-fossil-fuel power go with nuclear?

acidburnNSA 4y ago
On cost, the simple answer is that if fossil and biofuel had to pay for the air pollution health effects they cause (4.2 M deaths/year [1]) and the climate change damage they cause, then every utility would switch to nuclear for baseload immediately. The markets are incorrect in not capturing these costs. Nuclear is dramatically cheaper than fossil and biofuel on this basis alone in a real market. And of course the advantage of nuclear over wind and solar is that nuclear has a 92% capacity factor with fairly regular well-planned outages. The wind and solar costs you've seen, while stellar, do not include the costs of the backup generators and batteries, additional transmission to remote site, overcapacity required to charge the batteries at scale, etc etc. Nuclear is certainly on par with them in a fully decarbonized system. In any case, building nuclear alongside wind and solar makes the whole system cheaper [2]. Regarding 100 year no-go zones, the hottest areas I see around Fukushima today measure about 30 mSv/yr, which is about 2x higher than Denver's natural radiation. Japan is lifting even more evacuation orders as we speak [3]. If they gave people the proper information about the health risks (e.g. that you need more than 100 mSv in a year before the smallest measurable cancer increase can be seen) then people would have all moved back 10 years ago. [1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution [2] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2018.08.006 [3] https://sp.m.jiji.com/english/show/19741 https://sp.m.jiji.com/english/show/19741

kkfx 4y ago

A small notes, with the premise that I favor nuclear in general, not only future hoped fusion if we will ever get it: we use electricity mostly on-shore, also deep inside land. Surely a water-born NPP can travel so can theoretically adapt to different needs, theoretically only since it still demand a land-based distribution network, surely a water-born NPP can be sunk easily in case of an emergency so it's safer BUT while I agree that due to climate change and social changes derived we need flexibility that means going via air and water instead of land since infra on land can't really be built and changed in quick enough time at a low enough costs with a low enough needs of natural resources and yes we can easily move stuff on the sea that on land, BUT we still live on land... Also for defense needs, where possible, we want critical industries, those who most need nuclear, deep inside land to better protect them to direct military attacks... Such floating power plants can be useful for a colonization where land can't be used like in the now melting Arctic areas where we can't safely built on soil due to it's continuous changes and we need to quickly develop infra there in a race for natural resources, they can be useful in some very seismic areas or for emergency usage in remote areas IF small enough and able to travel quickly enough (witch is unlikely) avoiding being too near the coastline to be safe in maritime terms but I fail to see other realistic usages... It seems a bit like the '70s nuclear-powered aircraft experiments, formally nice, but only in engineering terms, and they fails as expected...

h12nz 4y ago

My understanding is that naval reactors mostly (if not all?) require near-weapons grade uranium. Though I assume this is to allow a compact design. How highly enriched would it need to be in this case? Any more than current land-based civil designs?