3 ms·

The nuclear non proliferation treaty limits uranium refinement capabilities to a handful of corporations and state actors. Moreover the overwhelming majority of

The nuclear non proliferation treaty limits uranium refinement capabilities to a handful of corporations and state actors. Moreover the overwhelming majority of available uranium is in a handful of countries which are firmly under the control of one of a few countries. > Portability. Energy generation is best done mostly locally. For portability you have simply connect each local area with the one next to it and you dynamically shift north or south in Japan. Let's just put nuclear reactors on trucks, planes and and boats then shall we? Also dense fuels can be shipped which allows trading energy with anyone with a port (which doesn't include hydrogen currently, but advances in storage would solve this). > Just put 1 reactor down for each X people and its totally fine. So you're proposing that instead of paying $100/MWh for nuclear plants used at full capacity, we instead the same price per capacity but run them half to a third of the time thus increasing the cost to about 100x that of solar? Existing green ammonia and hydrogen tech costs less, doesn't take decades to come online, is dropping in cost by double digit percentage per year and is nowhere near as susceptible to earthquakes. > You clearly don't understand how air cooled nuclear works. You have a heat engine. It has a hot side and a cold side. The lower the thermal capacity and mass of the cold side, the bigger and hotter it is. The hotter the cold side, the less efficient it is and the lower the energy throughput. If your cold side is mid-heatwave summer air you're going to have the exact same trouble france and china are nowc Dumping gigawatts into 30-40 degree air when the sun is already shining isn't a strategy for increasing energy density over solar (especially when you're competing against 20-year-from-now solar which will likely be on the order of 40% efficient). It just costs more. Your heat exchanger is going to wind up looking like a solar farm but with the side benefit of needing incredibly complex plumbing and killing anything within a few km.

panick21_ 4y ago
Japan is follow allow under international law to build everything required for civil nuclear. And Japan has enough nuclear material in Japan. There are breeder reactors, you don't need to mine or buy much U-235. You can literally easily create a repository with thorium/uranium for the next 100 years. Not to mention the existing fuel. > Let's just put nuclear reactors on trucks, planes and and boats then shall we? Now you are just trolling. But I guess if you don't have actual argument. You should really learn about high temperature reactors.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  > Japan is follow allow under international law to build everything required for civil nuclear. I didn't actually know this. That makes it possibly viable to maybe have some nuclear in the mix. But using it for peaking is still patently absurd, and banking your country's energy security on a bottle neck of one corporation is still an amazing way to make that corporation very rich and everyone else poor. > There are breeder reactors, you don't need to mine or buy much U-235. You can literally easily create a repository with thorium/uranium for the next 100 years. Not to mention the existing fuel. So now we're up to air cooled breeder reactors with 3x surplus capacity. What does that cost, $500/MWh plus massive publicly funded security costs? > Now you are just trolling. But I guess if you don't have actual argument. No. That's what portable energy means. Not a synonym for power lines. High density disconnected sources like H2 and fuels. Current generation batteries only have limited applicability for trucking, flight, and shipping. Upcoming techs don't improve energy density as cost and abundance whilst maintaining enough density for passenger cars are the primary focus. Green fuels solve this but only work with energy that costs a tiny fraction of the cost of nuclear such as wind and solar. Hydrogen has potential here if metal hydrides can be made cheaply and without exotic materials (and synergises well with nuclear because e->H2->e is more efficient than other fuels so you don't need surplus capacity for peaking). You can also move hundreds of gigawatts through a pipeline if needs be, so fuels have relevance in a world where wires are struggling to meet primary energy demand at reasonable cost. > You should really learn about high temperature reactors. TEGs as a first stage are slightly more promising than the same old brayton cycle at ~600 degrees, but they only improve efficiency marginally and you still need either masses of water, a huge massively expensive cooling stack (which still raises average temperature), or more area and cost than a solar farm to dump your 40-60% waste heat. They're also yet to prove cost efficient compared to solar as operating at 1000-2000 degrees is pretty hard on anything. "High temperature" gas based heat exchangers are still less efficient and much more expensive than gas burning turbines which are starting to struggle to be cost competitive with solar. Let it die. Nuclear has always been an option with massive negative tradeoffs in terms of how it shifts balance of power and has only been viable by mandating that the public insure them for free (like footing a trillion dollar bill for cleaning up fukushima which alone would have been enough to turn off every fossil fuel plant in the country any time there was sun or wind). Now we don't even have to consider those factors because they're also economically stupid on every level.

panick21_ 4y ago

Japan is follow allow under international law to build everything required for civil nuclear. And Japan has enough nuclear material in Japan. There are breeder reactors, you don't need to mine or buy much U-235. You can literally easily create a repository with thorium/uranium for the next 100 years. Not to mention the existing fuel. > Let's just put nuclear reactors on trucks, planes and and boats then shall we? Now you are just trolling. But I guess if you don't have actual argument. You should really learn about high temperature reactors.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Japan is follow allow under international law to build everything required for civil nuclear. I didn't actually know this. That makes it possibly viable to maybe have some nuclear in the mix. But using it for peaking is still patently absurd, and banking your country's energy security on a bottle neck of one corporation is still an amazing way to make that corporation very rich and everyone else poor. > There are breeder reactors, you don't need to mine or buy much U-235. You can literally easily create a repository with thorium/uranium for the next 100 years. Not to mention the existing fuel. So now we're up to air cooled breeder reactors with 3x surplus capacity. What does that cost, $500/MWh plus massive publicly funded security costs? > Now you are just trolling. But I guess if you don't have actual argument. No. That's what portable energy means. Not a synonym for power lines. High density disconnected sources like H2 and fuels. Current generation batteries only have limited applicability for trucking, flight, and shipping. Upcoming techs don't improve energy density as cost and abundance whilst maintaining enough density for passenger cars are the primary focus. Green fuels solve this but only work with energy that costs a tiny fraction of the cost of nuclear such as wind and solar. Hydrogen has potential here if metal hydrides can be made cheaply and without exotic materials (and synergises well with nuclear because e->H2->e is more efficient than other fuels so you don't need surplus capacity for peaking). You can also move hundreds of gigawatts through a pipeline if needs be, so fuels have relevance in a world where wires are struggling to meet primary energy demand at reasonable cost. > You should really learn about high temperature reactors. TEGs as a first stage are slightly more promising than the same old brayton cycle at ~600 degrees, but they only improve efficiency marginally and you still need either masses of water, a huge massively expensive cooling stack (which still raises average temperature), or more area and cost than a solar farm to dump your 40-60% waste heat. They're also yet to prove cost efficient compared to solar as operating at 1000-2000 degrees is pretty hard on anything. "High temperature" gas based heat exchangers are still less efficient and much more expensive than gas burning turbines which are starting to struggle to be cost competitive with solar. Let it die. Nuclear has always been an option with massive negative tradeoffs in terms of how it shifts balance of power and has only been viable by mandating that the public insure them for free (like footing a trillion dollar bill for cleaning up fukushima which alone would have been enough to turn off every fossil fuel plant in the country any time there was sun or wind). Now we don't even have to consider those factors because they're also economically stupid on every level.