4 ms·

Love the sleight of hand. Pretend breeding ratios don't exist, a vague estimate of the additional cost with output reference of a capability the reactor doesn't

Love the sleight of hand. Pretend breeding ratios don't exist, a vague estimate of the additional cost with output reference of a capability the reactor doesn't even have (with no mention of running costs or cost of money not applying to that finance model), pretending exported russian reactors aren't there to make countries dependent on rosatom (how are those sanctions going?), and pretending china's planned reactor fleet is all going to get built when they're already 20GW behind target and that their costs aren't increasing when they were promised a decrease. So in short a bunch of irrelevant facts that you pretended were a rebuttal.

credit_guy 4y ago
> that you pretended were a rebuttal Maybe you are new around here, but that”s not how we exchage ideas on HN.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Well nuclear stans do what you did consistently, but actual exchange of ideas entails honestly responding rather than saying something unrelated but on a similar subject and pretending it is a response or carefully answering half of a sentence with something covered by the other half.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    > honestly responding rather than saying something unrelated Unrelated? I responded to your claims, point by point. You said "tiny, inefficient and use highly enriched uranium", more expensive than Vogtle, China slowing down their nuclear program, and civilian reactors being used for breedign Plutonium, after which they fizzle out. I dedicated a paragraph to each of these. Feel free and re-read my response, and try to link each paragraph with your corresponding claim. Also, feel free to familiarize yourself with this site's guidelines. The link is at the bottom of the screen to the left of the FAQ link, but here it is for your convenience: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Your response to tiny was a 60MWe reactor, your response to inefficient was to ignore burnup and cite a 28% thermal efficiency (when new utility thermal generation is in the 40-60% range), your response to highly enriched was to cite a reactor of a completely different design from a different program to the one you were talking about, your response to cost was that it was 'only' $5/W more expensive than an unspecified alternative (but that's not including all the soft costs), and your response about China's program was what they said they would do in 2021 (right after failing to do what they said they'd do by 2020) rather than what they are actually doing which is building far fewer than they did in the late 2000s and early 2010s for more money per reactor, your response to plutonium production was to cite reactors built (mostly by russia) for geopolitical dominance and countries that built them for weapons programs which were later stopped or to keep short-term nuclear weapons capability (like Japan). None of it was an honest response or supported your initial proposal. None of it responded to my points Now you are claiming that calling you on your lies is a terrible sleight.
      - credit_guy 4y ago
        > calling you on your lies Your answer would be so much better if you left out this sentence. Here's the relevant quote from the guidelines: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." This makes for a much better experience for all involved. Now, to get back to your issues. 1. 60 MWe is not tiny. If we could churn out lots of 60 MWe reactors we'd be far. The whole point of the SMR's is to do just that. Anti-nuclear people like you claim that this is not possible, but naval reactors achieve just that 2. Efficiency. 28% efficiency of converting thermal energy in electrical one is decent. The comparison point is the efficiency of commercial nuclear reactors, not of utility thermal generation. Coal and natural gas power plants burn much hotter, because they can. PWR reactors can't get any hotter than the critical temperature of water (374 deg Celsius), and that limits the maximum theoretical efficiency that they can achieve. As for the burnup, not sure what your point is. 3. Enriched uranium: there is no law of nature that naval reactors need to use highly enriched uranium, since the French reactors don't do that. Why does it matter if the American ones use enriched uranium? 4. China. Here's the facts: China had 10 GWe nuclear capacity in 2010. It has 53 GWe now [1]. Now, you are much more well versed than me in calling names, is this the point where I should call you a liar? 5. Here's a few countries in Europe that generate a lot of power using nuclear reactors, and did not use Russian designs: Belgium, Finland, Sweeden, Switzerland, Romania (yes, despite the fact Romania was part of the Eastern block, its nuclear reactors use the Canadian design Candu). Next to these countries, we can add Canada. None of these countries have or had ambitions to build nuclear weapons. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...

credit_guy 4y ago

> that you pretended were a rebuttal Maybe you are new around here, but that”s not how we exchage ideas on HN.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
Well nuclear stans do what you did consistently, but actual exchange of ideas entails honestly responding rather than saying something unrelated but on a similar subject and pretending it is a response or carefully answering half of a sentence with something covered by the other half.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  > honestly responding rather than saying something unrelated Unrelated? I responded to your claims, point by point. You said "tiny, inefficient and use highly enriched uranium", more expensive than Vogtle, China slowing down their nuclear program, and civilian reactors being used for breedign Plutonium, after which they fizzle out. I dedicated a paragraph to each of these. Feel free and re-read my response, and try to link each paragraph with your corresponding claim. Also, feel free to familiarize yourself with this site's guidelines. The link is at the bottom of the screen to the left of the FAQ link, but here it is for your convenience: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Your response to tiny was a 60MWe reactor, your response to inefficient was to ignore burnup and cite a 28% thermal efficiency (when new utility thermal generation is in the 40-60% range), your response to highly enriched was to cite a reactor of a completely different design from a different program to the one you were talking about, your response to cost was that it was 'only' $5/W more expensive than an unspecified alternative (but that's not including all the soft costs), and your response about China's program was what they said they would do in 2021 (right after failing to do what they said they'd do by 2020) rather than what they are actually doing which is building far fewer than they did in the late 2000s and early 2010s for more money per reactor, your response to plutonium production was to cite reactors built (mostly by russia) for geopolitical dominance and countries that built them for weapons programs which were later stopped or to keep short-term nuclear weapons capability (like Japan). None of it was an honest response or supported your initial proposal. None of it responded to my points Now you are claiming that calling you on your lies is a terrible sleight.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      > calling you on your lies Your answer would be so much better if you left out this sentence. Here's the relevant quote from the guidelines: When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." This makes for a much better experience for all involved. Now, to get back to your issues. 1. 60 MWe is not tiny. If we could churn out lots of 60 MWe reactors we'd be far. The whole point of the SMR's is to do just that. Anti-nuclear people like you claim that this is not possible, but naval reactors achieve just that 2. Efficiency. 28% efficiency of converting thermal energy in electrical one is decent. The comparison point is the efficiency of commercial nuclear reactors, not of utility thermal generation. Coal and natural gas power plants burn much hotter, because they can. PWR reactors can't get any hotter than the critical temperature of water (374 deg Celsius), and that limits the maximum theoretical efficiency that they can achieve. As for the burnup, not sure what your point is. 3. Enriched uranium: there is no law of nature that naval reactors need to use highly enriched uranium, since the French reactors don't do that. Why does it matter if the American ones use enriched uranium? 4. China. Here's the facts: China had 10 GWe nuclear capacity in 2010. It has 53 GWe now [1]. Now, you are much more well versed than me in calling names, is this the point where I should call you a liar? 5. Here's a few countries in Europe that generate a lot of power using nuclear reactors, and did not use Russian designs: Belgium, Finland, Sweeden, Switzerland, Romania (yes, despite the fact Romania was part of the Eastern block, its nuclear reactors use the Canadian design Candu). Next to these countries, we can add Canada. None of these countries have or had ambitions to build nuclear weapons. [1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil...