4 ms·

the thing that worries me about this approach is that you pepper your suburbs with these things, and terrorism or large scale war could make these really juicy

the thing that worries me about this approach is that you pepper your suburbs with these things, and terrorism or large scale war could make these really juicy and hard to defend targets that would make the immediate areas "dirty" with unusable land for centuries or longer.

option 4y ago
that is not the case
BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
>”hard to defend targets that would make the immediate areas "dirty" with unusable land for centuries or longer.” The smaller scale of the reactors limits how bad the fallout would be, both in terms of how violent any meltdown could be and how much material could be dispersed. You certainly wouldn’t have a Chernobyl or Fukushima situation. Cleanup would be expensive but it would not be unusable for centuries. From what I can tell small module reactors are not actually planned to be installed individually and dispersed around a city. All the plans suggest placing something like 6-10 together in a dedicated facility just like a conventional power plant. It would certainly have good security.
dirtyid 4y ago
>really juicy and hard to defend targets IMO the opposite, if anything small modular reactors can be more easily hardened and distributed to reduce vunerability. Relative to PRC underground infra abilities, I can see thousands of these buried reactors + with wide spread electrification to make for probably the most securitized energy infra. Large scale peer warfare where adversaries have global strike capabilities means countries can't rely on geographic distance for defense anymore. It will be back to old school geologic depth. Especially with respect to US, where energy autonomy increasingly =/= energy security. Fortress America becomes another Saudi Arabia where essentially extraction infra becomes vunerable/indefensible once advanced rocketry can hit large stationary targets on CONUS. In the meantime, there's already reports of people messing with US energy infra state side with drones and bullets.

option 4y ago

that is not the case

BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago

>”hard to defend targets that would make the immediate areas "dirty" with unusable land for centuries or longer.” The smaller scale of the reactors limits how bad the fallout would be, both in terms of how violent any meltdown could be and how much material could be dispersed. You certainly wouldn’t have a Chernobyl or Fukushima situation. Cleanup would be expensive but it would not be unusable for centuries. From what I can tell small module reactors are not actually planned to be installed individually and dispersed around a city. All the plans suggest placing something like 6-10 together in a dedicated facility just like a conventional power plant. It would certainly have good security.

dirtyid 4y ago

>really juicy and hard to defend targets IMO the opposite, if anything small modular reactors can be more easily hardened and distributed to reduce vunerability. Relative to PRC underground infra abilities, I can see thousands of these buried reactors + with wide spread electrification to make for probably the most securitized energy infra. Large scale peer warfare where adversaries have global strike capabilities means countries can't rely on geographic distance for defense anymore. It will be back to old school geologic depth. Especially with respect to US, where energy autonomy increasingly =/= energy security. Fortress America becomes another Saudi Arabia where essentially extraction infra becomes vunerable/indefensible once advanced rocketry can hit large stationary targets on CONUS. In the meantime, there's already reports of people messing with US energy infra state side with drones and bullets.