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One thing that really changed my mind about nuclear power recently has been the war in Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia. The happy path for nuclear looks as good as it

by foxyv 4y ago

One thing that really changed my mind about nuclear power recently has been the war in Ukraine and Zaporizhzhia. The happy path for nuclear looks as good as it gets. Huge amounts of energy for a tiny bit of fuel. Zero carbon emission from operation. No venting of waste into atmosphere. However, the potential for bad actors, corruption, and negligence to result in a country spanning disaster make me think that maybe paying the extra money for battery based solar and wind power isn't such a bad idea. Very few solar options could render a country un-livable.

DennisP 4y ago
That's one advantage of molten salt reactors. The troublesome parts of a nuclear breach are fission product gases with medium half-lives: isotopes of strontium, cesium, and iodine. With an MSR, all those are chemically bound in the salt. Instead of radioactive clouds you just have molten salt that cools into hot rocks at the reactor site.
- foxyv 4y ago
  I did not know that! Pretty cool!
tuatoru 4y ago
Even without considering toxicity, national security would prefer a widely dispersed generating capacity. It's relatively easy to have 10,000 PV and wind farms each contributing to their local electricity network. That's a lot more work for an invader to knock out than say 20 or 30 nuclear plants.
- foxyv 4y ago
  Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure this is true. Especially since our grid is so out of date. For instance, one attack in San Jose back in 2014 by one person with a rifle almost took down northern California. There isn't a lot that having distributed power generation will do if your distribution system is burning to the ground. I mean, if one dude with a rifle can take down an entire substation, imagine what a couple cruise missiles in a time of war could do. However, I imagine that rooftop solar and municipal batteries would do a lot to encourage a more modern power distribution system with micro-grids and battery based peaking.
- DennisP 4y ago
  For the US, conventional attack isn't a serious concern for the foreseeable future. A large nuclear attack is another matter, but losing the power grid would be one of our smallest problems in that case.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Huge amounts of energy for a tiny bit of fuel. Zero carbon emission from operation. No venting of waste into atmosphere. This isn't even really true if you look at the whole supply chain for a PWR. The energy density of the low grade ore that is becoming typical is no more than fossil fuels, and it requires vast amounts of sulfuric acid underground and in tailings pools that contaiminates the ground water even worse than fracking. It's significantly better than fossil fuels over all but still quite destructive. Breeders would solve this if they existed.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  > It's significantly better than fossil fuels but still quite destructive. There was recently this info-graphic circulating here on Hacker News [1]. It shows all the metals we mined in 2021. There's a huge cube representing Iron, of which more than 2 billion tones were mined. Then there are progressively smaller piles. Aluminum, the next most mined metal comes at a paltry 68 million tons, Chromium at 41 million, and copper at 21 million. Uranium is there, but it's not that easy to find. It comes at 48.3 kilo-tons, about 50 times less than nickel and 200 times less than Titanium. Of course, coal is not in this infographic. People would get a bit spooked if they realized we mined 3 times more coal than iron ore. And we promptly burned it. [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-2021-visualized/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-...
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    The thing to remember is the enriched reactor grade Uranium is only about 140ppm in low grade ore. In a mine like Husab you're digging up and processing 7 tonnes or so for that 1kg of fuel (and 7kg of DU). Iron and Al ore concentration is measured in 2 digit percent -- often over 50%. Coal ore is coal (with half water and ash in the real dirty stuff). As such the scale of Uranium mining is not really less, there's just less end product. ISL is less energy intensive but limited in scope and remediation has never been as successful as claimed. The millions of tonnes of sulfuric acid involved are also a problem. The most destructive items on your list are copper and chromium. The former is used in about the same quantities in renewables (offshore wind presently uses several times more, other methods can use less and an increasing share of the marketis using Al for cabling and coils) and the latter is used more in nuclear. A combined mine like olympic dam can create several times more net electricity and net power in the form of PV from copper and silver than the Uranium that comes out (and that's even after taking most of the silver for control rods). That said, the subject here is high burnup and breeder reactors. In principle they actually live up to this dream (especially if the beryllium can be eliminated). It would be foolish to pin all our hopes on something that hasn't been put into practise though. In general they're in the same category as quad junction 50% efficient perovskites, cheap TEG based 24hr CSP, or NaS batteries with the same energy density as chemical fuels -- worth pursuing but not available soon.

by foxyv 4y ago

DennisP 4y ago

That's one advantage of molten salt reactors. The troublesome parts of a nuclear breach are fission product gases with medium half-lives: isotopes of strontium, cesium, and iodine. With an MSR, all those are chemically bound in the salt. Instead of radioactive clouds you just have molten salt that cools into hot rocks at the reactor site.

foxyv 4y ago
I did not know that! Pretty cool!

tuatoru 4y ago

Even without considering toxicity, national security would prefer a widely dispersed generating capacity. It's relatively easy to have 10,000 PV and wind farms each contributing to their local electricity network. That's a lot more work for an invader to knock out than say 20 or 30 nuclear plants.

foxyv 4y ago
Unfortunately, I'm not entirely sure this is true. Especially since our grid is so out of date. For instance, one attack in San Jose back in 2014 by one person with a rifle almost took down northern California. There isn't a lot that having distributed power generation will do if your distribution system is burning to the ground. I mean, if one dude with a rifle can take down an entire substation, imagine what a couple cruise missiles in a time of war could do. However, I imagine that rooftop solar and municipal batteries would do a lot to encourage a more modern power distribution system with micro-grids and battery based peaking.
DennisP 4y ago
For the US, conventional attack isn't a serious concern for the foreseeable future. A large nuclear attack is another matter, but losing the power grid would be one of our smallest problems in that case.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> Huge amounts of energy for a tiny bit of fuel. Zero carbon emission from operation. No venting of waste into atmosphere. This isn't even really true if you look at the whole supply chain for a PWR. The energy density of the low grade ore that is becoming typical is no more than fossil fuels, and it requires vast amounts of sulfuric acid underground and in tailings pools that contaiminates the ground water even worse than fracking. It's significantly better than fossil fuels over all but still quite destructive. Breeders would solve this if they existed.

credit_guy 4y ago
> It's significantly better than fossil fuels but still quite destructive. There was recently this info-graphic circulating here on Hacker News [1]. It shows all the metals we mined in 2021. There's a huge cube representing Iron, of which more than 2 billion tones were mined. Then there are progressively smaller piles. Aluminum, the next most mined metal comes at a paltry 68 million tons, Chromium at 41 million, and copper at 21 million. Uranium is there, but it's not that easy to find. It comes at 48.3 kilo-tons, about 50 times less than nickel and 200 times less than Titanium. Of course, coal is not in this infographic. People would get a bit spooked if they realized we mined 3 times more coal than iron ore. And we promptly burned it. [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-2021-visualized/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-metals-we-mined-in-...
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  The thing to remember is the enriched reactor grade Uranium is only about 140ppm in low grade ore. In a mine like Husab you're digging up and processing 7 tonnes or so for that 1kg of fuel (and 7kg of DU). Iron and Al ore concentration is measured in 2 digit percent -- often over 50%. Coal ore is coal (with half water and ash in the real dirty stuff). As such the scale of Uranium mining is not really less, there's just less end product. ISL is less energy intensive but limited in scope and remediation has never been as successful as claimed. The millions of tonnes of sulfuric acid involved are also a problem. The most destructive items on your list are copper and chromium. The former is used in about the same quantities in renewables (offshore wind presently uses several times more, other methods can use less and an increasing share of the marketis using Al for cabling and coils) and the latter is used more in nuclear. A combined mine like olympic dam can create several times more net electricity and net power in the form of PV from copper and silver than the Uranium that comes out (and that's even after taking most of the silver for control rods). That said, the subject here is high burnup and breeder reactors. In principle they actually live up to this dream (especially if the beryllium can be eliminated). It would be foolish to pin all our hopes on something that hasn't been put into practise though. In general they're in the same category as quad junction 50% efficient perovskites, cheap TEG based 24hr CSP, or NaS batteries with the same energy density as chemical fuels -- worth pursuing but not available soon.