31 ms·

I’m in Wyoming to celebrate the next nuclear breakthrough

• ggm 3y ago
  Unlike water, the sodium doesn’t need to be pumped, because as it gets hot, it rises, and as it rises, it cools off Mr Gates, can you hire another copy editor please?
  • hulitu 3y ago
    Well, the same phylosophy is used in the Windows operating system with great results. /s
  • Kiro 3y ago
    What's the problem?
    • Pepe1vo 3y ago
      "cools down" is grammatically more correct.
      • ggm 3y ago
        Do you know what hot water does? Like liquid sodium, it rises. The point here isn't that liquid sodium has some magical lifting property water doesn't have, it's the enthalpy, latent heat: water can't hold as much heat energy without pressure to contain the phase change into steam. If you remove hot things from the primary heat source they cool. The sodium is just more tractable. Einstein and (Leo) Szilard had patents in liquid metal pumped refrigerator designs using electro magnetics instead of mechanical pumps, Richard Rhodes talks about them, and applications to cooling nuclear systems.
    • yellow_lead 3y ago
      Water also rises as it gets hot, and cools off
• selcuka 3y ago
  I still believe it is safer than water cooled plants, but Mr. Gates doesn't seem to have touched the downsides of using sodium [1]: > A disadvantage of sodium is its chemical reactivity, which requires special precautions to prevent and suppress fires. If sodium comes into contact with water it reacts to produce sodium hydroxide and hydrogen, and the hydrogen burns in contact with air. This was the case at the Monju Nuclear Power Plant in a 1995 accident. In addition, neutron capture causes it to become radioactive; albeit with a half-life of only 15 hours. > Another problem is leaks. Sodium at high temperatures ignites in contact with oxygen. Such sodium fires can be extinguished by powder, or by replacing the air with nitrogen. A Russian breeder reactor, the BN-600, reported 27 sodium leaks in a 17-year period, 14 of which led to sodium fires. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor#Dis...
  • belorn 3y ago
    How does molten salt solar plants solve those problems?
    • tuatoru 3y ago
      I believe they use salts of other metals, not sodium. But in any case, in a salt the metal has already reacted with something and is unlikely to react further with commonly encountered substances.
    • _a_a_a_ 3y ago
      Because a salt is an already-reacted substance. Molten sodium and molten sodium chloride are utterly different, for example. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cite.202000137 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cite.202000137 "In commercial CSP plants, almost exclusively a non-eutectic salt mixture of 60 wt % sodium nitrate and 40 wt % potassium nitrate is utilized. This mixture is commonly referred to as Solar Salt"
    • ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
      I've heard that salt has corrosion issues. These may also apply to sodium, though.
• Mistletoe 3y ago
  https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/2022-12-14/the-opening-of-terrapowers-nuclear-plant-in-kemmerer-will-be-delayed-by-two-years https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/natural-resources-energy/... > The start date will likely be pushed back two years to 2030, according to a press release from the nuclear plant developer TerraPower. The main reason is Russia’s war in Ukraine, as Russia is the only commercial supplier of the highly enriched uranium (HALEU) the plant needs to run. Great…
  • neffo 3y ago
    Importing enriched uranium from an adversary leads to > America’s energy independence Sure. > First, water isn’t very good at absorbing heat—it turns to steam and stops absorbing heat at just 100 degrees C. Umm, this is completely wrong and backwards.
    • throwaway50606 3y ago
      America's energy independence [from fossil fuels] - yeah indeed it does. Also, what stops America from producing its own?
      • crote 3y ago
        Uranium mining has significant health risks, and it is pretty much guaranteed to result in significant pollution of the surrounding area. The enrichment phase isn't much better either. Turns out the US has things like worker protection laws and environmental protection laws. Producing it locally is expensive, it is much cheaper to outsource the problem to a country with a more relaxed view on the issue.
        • ClumsyPilot 3y ago
          There is plenty of uranium mining in developed nations and the price of nuclear fuel is not particularly relevant - 90 of the cost is pther stuff
        • Zigurd 3y ago
• deepmauka 3y ago
  I think the real story here is that the project was successfully sold to the people of Wyoming, who now appear to be shouldering the responsibility of decarbonization.
  • FollowingTheDao 3y ago
    ...and Gates makes a profit. This makes me worry about how the plant is being sold. I mean what are the unknown unknowns? Does a statement like this give you confidence? "TerraPower says these risks have been considered and addressed as much as reasonably possible." https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/01/25/former-dea-nuclear-security-official-says-wyoming-reactor-not-safe/ https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/01/25/former-dea-nuclear-s... "Tallen said he’s not ideologically opposed to nuclear power. He said he rubbed elbows with that crowd years ago, but it’s not where he stands today. “The distrust of nuclear power is one of the major ideological tenets of left-wing, anti-establishment politics,” Tallen said. “I had to say to them, I can’t agree with you on many of your basic assumptions. I’m just saying that this particular [Natrium] technology pursued the way it is right now – I don’t think it’s a good idea.” "
    • DarkNova6 3y ago
      For some reason "reasonably possible. Sounds a lot like "economically reasonable". Which should absolutely worry anybody who has the faintest ideas about how insidious Sodium is as a cooling material.
  • deepsquirrelnet 3y ago
    Kind of surprising, given that coal mining is one of their largest industries. I’m actually kind of shocked.
  • LinuxBender 3y ago
    I am in Wyoming. I think it makes sense to the people here. The state is going green and the mines are shutting down. A suitable replacement needs to be created first before all the mines are decommissioned. Some of the people will be employed by the nuclear plant and some will have to move or retire. The person I know at the mine is retiring soon. As this state provides a lot of power to the US power grid currently with coal [1] I think it makes sense to transition as much of it as possible to nuclear and renewables. The state is not limiting itself to one source, all options are on the table and more options are being added soon. We do not show up as a big number for wind and solar power because it is only augmenting some power for some of the small towns and not the US grid yet [2]. [1] - https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WY#tabs-3 https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=WY#tabs-3 [2] - https://www.transwestexpress.net/ https://www.transwestexpress.net/
• barney54 3y ago
  So when will Terra Power actually begin construction? What really matters is that these small modular reactors actually get built.
  • ddgflorida 3y ago
    Right - quite surprising how long it takes to get one of these up and running.
• mbgerring 3y ago
  It’s a good thing we have solar, wind and batteries to do most of the work of decarbonization before 2050, because it seems like if these supposed breakthroughs in nuclear are going to deliver on their clean energy promises, we’re going to have to buy them lots of time to actually get working.
  • marsven_422 3y ago
    [dead]
  • jackmott42 3y ago
    If you get some time, try doing some napkin math on how many batteries you will need to actually do most of the work with wind and solar. It is something you can work out a ballpark number for a given % of wind/solar and while not impossible it is really a big number. Way beyond what we will get out of actual chemical batteries by 2050, we need gigantic scale pump back hydro projects on top of that. Trillion dollar range. So Nuclear may be less daunting, expensive as it is.
    • chemmail 3y ago
      Analysis put covering the whole US with solar to cost about $5 trillion and the world about $65 trillion dollars. A lot, but it would pay for itself in about 5 years. The only blockade is all the people making all these trillions from the oil and all the power sources that make them all this money.
      • progrus 3y ago
        We’re never giving you 5 trillion.
        • thinkcontext 3y ago
          $5T sounds like a lot but it's spread over the lifetime of the panels, 20 years. What do utilities spend on capex and opex over 20 years.
• ChatGTP 3y ago
  [flagged]
• Jabbles 3y ago
  "liquid sodium, whose boiling point is more than 8 times higher than water’s" Ew, multiplicative temperature comparisons in unspecified units. Sodium's boiling point is 882'C. "so it can absorb all the extra heat" Confusion of temperature and heat? Sodium's specific heat capacity is ~1/3 of water, so sodium's higher boiling point doesn't by itself mean that it can absorb more heat, though ofc the combination is still in sodium's favour.
  • sandworm101 3y ago
    But sodium's reactive, fire-starting, go-boom, good pair of running shoes temperature is considerable lower than water's.
  • jebarker 3y ago
    > Ew, multiplicative temperature comparisons in unspecified units In the previous paragraph he's said that water boils at 100 C
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • tempodox 3y ago
      I'd expect a multiplicative temperature comparison to refer to Kelvin, not Celsius.
      • jebarker 3y ago
        Ah, TIL that Celsius is "non-multiplicative". From ChatGPT: "When using Celsius as the unit for temperature, it is not meaningful to say that one temperature is a certain number of times higher than another. The Celsius scale is based on the freezing point (0°C) and boiling point (100°C) of water, which are not absolute values. Thus, the Celsius scale has negative values, and simply multiplying temperatures does not provide an accurate representation of relative differences. If you want to compare temperatures in a more meaningful way, you should use the Kelvin scale. The Kelvin scale is an absolute temperature scale, with its zero point (0 K) representing absolute zero. In this scale, it is appropriate to say that one temperature is a certain number of times higher than another because the scale starts at an absolute zero point. To convert Celsius temperatures to Kelvin, add 273.15 to the Celsius value. Once the temperatures are in Kelvin, you can then make meaningful comparisons using multiplication or division."
• TradingPlaces 3y ago
  It’s much more expensive than solar or wind + storage, so why exactly?
  • crims0n 3y ago
    More reliable, less of an eyesore.
    • hermitcrab 3y ago
      I think windmills are rather beautiful. Subjective, obviously.
      • ren_engineer 3y ago
        Have you ever been around a sizable wind farm at night when you have to look at bright red flashing lights for miles in every direction?
        • hermitcrab 3y ago
          Can't say I have. Is it any worse than looking out at a big city at night?
          • crims0n 3y ago
            Probably not as serene as the star-filled countryside they replaced.
            • hermitcrab 3y ago
              Well, no, but better than a coal fired power station?
  • Zigurd 3y ago
    Exactly. Electricity is fungible and so is capital. Spend the capital on the technology that arrives soonest with the least capital. Cost comparisons for nuclear are also dubious. The French are discovering their decommissioning costs are a multiple of what they predicted. Who, using what cash-generating capability, is going to pay for that? And where to reprocess or stash the waste? What we are seeing with uranium fission plants being touted as new tech is an attempt to forget the PWR uranium fission problems. TBF it is not for the sodium-cooled uranium reactor people to solve all the problems. But those problems still need solving.
• can16358p 3y ago
  Continuosly talking about providing workers and patriotically pumping US's independence on power, while only slightly touching the actual plant design and safety with questionable points. Bill Gates keeps getting fishier every day.
  • DarkNova6 3y ago
    looking at how cutthroat he acted as CEO of Microsoft, should we have expected anything different?
  • ethbr0 3y ago
    I'd hazard that, given its content and writing, can16358p and technical reactor geeks are not the primary audience this was intended for.
    • can16358p 3y ago
      We're definitely not the intended audience, though I believe what I'd said still applies the same way.
      • ethbr0 3y ago
        I'd say he realizes that a bit part of change is calibrating a message to a wide audience, to recruit them to your cause.
• Jabbles 3y ago
  The article implies that sodium cooling is novel, but it's been used in (experimental) reactors since the 1950s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I#Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_Breeder_Reactor_I...
  • pxmpxm 3y ago
    Didn't the soviets use it on their fast attack submarines?
    • Iwan-Zotow 3y ago
      Lead not sodium
      • ethbr0 3y ago
        Yes. Lead-bismuth in the 7 boat Alfa class https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-class_submarine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-class_submarine Presumably you wouldn't want to use something that violently catches fire (sodium) in a vehicle designed to tolerate nearby explosions.
        • hliyan 3y ago
          Also a vehicle that is immersed in a liquid that violently reacts with it.
        • acidburnNSA 3y ago
          Presumably. The USA did build a sodium-cooled submarine at one point, the Seawolf. Having high thermal efficiency increases range, and liquid metals can be pumped electromagnetically and completely silently, with no moving parts. It was converted to water coolant later due to technical challenges though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Seawolf_(SSN-575) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Seawolf_(SSN-575)
• trallnag 3y ago
  I have zero respect for Bull Gates' opinion, ideas, and beliefs.
  • pcdoodle 3y ago
    Wanna grab some pie later?
• javajosh 3y ago
  >It also includes an energy storage system that will allow it to control how much electricity it produces at any given time. Does anyone know more details about this? I'm thinking it's a monster flywheel. Which would be very cool.
  • ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Presumably just insulated storage of hot stuff to act as a buffer between the heat production and use for electricity generation. Very similar to what CSP plants do.
  • zdragnar 3y ago
    The molten sodium is a storage of energy in the form of heat. Keep it well contained and insulated, and you draw off only the heat that is needed to convert to kinetic energy, which then generates electric current through induction. Like a monster flywheel, there are all kinds of things that might go wrong, but they're all far less scary than Chernobyl style meltdowns.
  • RandomChance 3y ago
    The Natrium data sheet[1] says that it is "Molten salt energy storage", so based on the diagram[2] it appears that salt (not sodium) is being pumped to to the reactor and stored in large tanks, similar to thermal mass solar installations. I assume the sodium is internal to the reactor only, but can't say for sure. [1]:https://www.terrapower.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/TP_2023_Natrium_Technology-0215.pdf https://www.terrapower.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/TP_202... [2]:https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/natriumpower/ https://www.terrapower.com/our-work/natriumpower/
• ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  He's still talking down renewables, which is unfortunate, but we got to the tipping point despite him so it's less annoying than it used to be. > fact, in terms of lives lost, nuclear power is by far the safest way to produce energy. I don't think this is true anymore even if you skip the "by far" and if you include the "by far" it's not been true for maybe as long as this plant has been in planning.
  • Drblessing 3y ago
    > I don't think this is true anymore even if you skip the "by far" and if you include the "by far" it's not been true for maybe as long as this plant has been in planning. Source? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2211339822000880 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22113...
    • ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy This is a pro-nuclear site. The original version of the article had nuclear coming out ahead but had no info on renewables: https://web.archive.org/web/20200210102743/https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://web.archive.org/web/20200210102743/https://ourworldi... They updated it with newer information, and now it is no longer winning. That "new" information, is from 2014, from this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652615009877 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596... > Our study shows how these energy systems collectively involved 686 accidents resulting in 182,794 human fatalities and $265.1 billion in property damages. Across the entire sample, the mean amount of property damage was $388.8 million and 267.2 fatalities per accident, though when reflected as a median the numbers substantially improve to $820,000 in damages per accident and zero fatalities. Wind energy is the most frequent to incur an accident within our sample (48.8 percent of accidents), hydroelectric accidents tend to be the most fatal (97.2 percent of all deaths), and nuclear energy accidents tend to be the most expensive (accounting for 90.8 percent of damages). The article uses this data to present a set of unique risk profiles: nuclear, hydro, and wind energy are categorized as having a “high” risk of accidents; hydrogen, biofuels, and biomass “moderate” a accident risk; solar and geothermal a “low” risk. Think about how much renewables have been deployed since 2014. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/modern-renewable-prod?time=2000..latest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/modern-renewable-prod?tim...
• djha-skin 3y ago
  > When it opens (potentially in 2030), So this is an announcement of an announcement. Nuclear power plants have a very long history of being shut down right before they open, so now I'm more skeptical that this will ever work. This happened a lot at Hanford in Washington. They built something like four power plants up there but when they were 90% complete Congress only approved one of them. It sounds really cool Congress approves its building but once it's about to open congress gets scared because of how people feel about nuclear power plants close to their house. Regardless of how cool they say their technology is I will be more interested when it actually opens.
• johnchristopher 3y ago
  So. Can someone Eli5 to me ? There's a large consensus on climate change (it's caused by humans, it's getting worse, it will increase catastrophes). Only people on the fringe regularly and vocally claim otherwise (there's no climate change, it's natural, it won't have any impact, impacts are good, it's all activist's fault because they scared use and we didn't act). Reading HN and its heated debates around this topic, I don't see any consensus on nuclear vs renewables. Not even a consensus like "it's the mix, stupid". Do our scientists have a consensus on how to power our societies in regards to climate change ? If not, is it because it's too soon to settle on something ? Or there's too much bad science fabricated ? Or do we have have the choice, all things being equal: go full nuclear, or go full renewables or go mix but... as a specie we (or our leaders) collectively choose not to ?
  • gessha 3y ago
    A mix would always be nice because of diversification. I don’t think anyone wants full nuclear. Building water, geo and hydro is (as of now) cheaper to build compared to nuclear [citation needed]. And it’s also “free” energy. Why not use it to reduce the usage of nuclear fuel?
  • skippyboxedhero 3y ago
    You can tell how well someone understands a topic by their ability to explain the argument of those who they disagree with.
  • bryanlarsen 3y ago
    This is an economics and politics question, not a science question. Science has delivered the tools, it's a question of how we pay for it and who pays for it. Scientists don't have a good track record providing answers to economics and political questions. OTOH, neither do economists nor political scientists.
  • juujian 3y ago
    The academic debate is generally dominated by two concerns around nuclear energy. The first one is that nuclear energy is by far the most expensive form by unit of energy produced. New project like to claim the opposite, but that is always before cost overruns and years of delay. In general the final price tag may be 2-3x as much than the estimate. Plant Vogtle in Georgial for instance went for $14B to $34B. Nuclear power plants also need water for cooling, so they are sensitive to both drought and extreme heat. Which is generally when you most desperately need electricity. Meanwhile, the same crowd claims to have economics on its side when railing against renewables, which are the cheapest unit by unit, and a great contingency plan for extreme weather events, like the disasters in Haiti. But the bigger concern raised is that some calls for nuclear are a "cop-out". Nuclear happens to be great for damming up demands for renewable energy, while buying time for existing production capacity. It is not unusual for projects to run for years before any tangible construction is done, and even then it is not unusual for advanced projects to be cancelled for cost overruns. Meanwhile, you can have a solar panel on your roof in a couple of months. So it has some of the qualities of ExxonMobil calling for a carbon tax because they know it is unlikely to happen.[^1] So overall, the academic debate over nuclear does not have much to do with its technical characteristics, it mostly has to do with the political dimensions of who the advocates are and what their goals or interests are. And if you are in favor of nuclear, it is still a good idea to look at who is on your side and consider what their motivation for fighting that fight is. [^1]: https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/06/30/exxon-climate-change-undercover/ https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/06/30/exxon-climate-ch...
• kyrofa 3y ago
  > Safety isn’t the only reason I’m excited about the Natrium design. It also includes an energy storage system that will allow it to control how much electricity it produces at any given time. That’s unique among nuclear reactors, and it’s essential for integrating with power grids that use variable sources like solar and wind. I'm surprised this is all he says on this matter. As far as I'm aware, this problem is largely unsolved, and one of the reasons dams can't go away: they're the only power generation technology that we can spin up and down in response to fluctuation in wind power and so on. That's because we don't have a good solution for storing energy on this scale, and thus must use the energy we generate. Have we finally come up with one? A water battery (pumping water into a reservoir behind a dam) is the only one I know of, which doesn't seem to scale well.
  • p1mrx 3y ago
    Any of the high-temperature reactor designs (sodium, molten salt, TRISO, etc.) can be combined with thermal energy storage. Light water reactors only get up to 300°C, which is barely hot enough to spin a turbine. At >600°C, you can heat an intermediate fluid, lose some energy, and still spin a turbine.
    • kyrofa 3y ago
      So the idea is that there are chambers of molten salt (or similar) that can be heated when a spinning turbine is not needed, and it'll stay hot enough to spin one later? Any idea how long it stays hot? What happens when they're all already heated?
      • p1mrx 3y ago
        12-24 hours of molten salt storage should be enough to generate power all day, and sell it at times when electricity is most expensive. There's not much point storing for multiple days, when the reactor itself behaves like long-duration storage. If your reactor is producing energy with no buyers, and your thermal storage is full, then you probably should've built it somewhere else, but in that case you can just power down the reactor.
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• vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago
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• m348e912 3y ago
  I am curious what HN thinks of RFK Jr's position on nuclear power. He was a guest on the latest all-in podcast and went into his positions in-depth. Something to the affect that nuclear is more expensive than other traditional and renewable sources. No traditional insurance company will insure nuclear plants. No traditional bank will finance nuclear builds. Nuclear power is still too risky to be considered as a viable power source. He adds, instead continue focus on wind and solar and improve transmission (using DC) to make it a viable power system for the US. Is he uninformed? Direct current (DC) is the worst kind of power type for long distance transmission. (Unless something has changed). My understanding is that solar and wind generated power has shown not to be consistent enough and too localized to currently meet US power demands.
  • p1mrx 3y ago
    Powering the US without emitting CO2 generally requires either (1) lots of new transmission lines to share wind/solar between regions, or (2) lots of nuclear so we don't have to. > Direct current (DC) is the worst kind of power type for long distance transmission. AC was traditionally used for long range transmission because a transformer can easily increase or decrease the voltage. Transmitting DC is actually more efficient, but it requires modern semiconductor technology to generate the voltages necessary. > My understanding is that solar and wind generated power has shown not to be consistent enough and too localized That's why we would need transmission to make it non-local.
• barathr 3y ago
  The lifecycle cost of nuclear is still higher than solar PV even with storage and we have low-risk, low-tech solar-with-storage options such as molten-salt concentrated solar, which, while not as efficient as solar PV, is very simple technology. Solar PV and wind are cheap enough that overbuilding is easy. One might wonder what we can do with surplus power during times of day when we have too much solar (middle of the day) or too much wind (middle of the night) -- we can do desalination with the surplus solar (matches the demand curve of water use across the day and across the year) and convert wind to nitrogen: https://wcroc.cfans.umn.edu/research/renewable-energy/wind-fertilizer https://wcroc.cfans.umn.edu/research/renewable-energy/wind-f...
  • StillBored 3y ago
    Its very tiring that there is always someone here telling us how inexpensive PV and wind are compared to other generation. Which is true per watt, until you try to assure that watt is actually available when its needed. So its comparing the costs of two entirely different things, power which can be predicted and produced at a given level, and power which may or may not produce anything over a given time-frame. And so, i might say its a lie... Particularly because the costs associated with making a watt of wind/PV reliable easily adds an order of magnitude in costs, making wind/PV a much worst cost proposition than just about anything else. And its particularly bad in places that don't have existing hydro and nukes because the only realistic way to back it up with today's technology/economy is fossil fuel sources. (aka grid scale batteries capable of multi day power storage simply don't exist, and you can't "overbuild" your way out of the problem.). So its not even carbon free.
    • coyotespike 3y ago
      Let's champion both. Living in Austin, I plan to add solar to my house someday, and I would also love to see us build nuclear power plants. I really cannot understand why people set these things at odds with each other. They are both better than fossil fuels or degrowth.
      • derefr 3y ago
• danielodievich 3y ago
  Excited to see the progress on this, as I have local connections. One of my nearby neighbors is the engineering manager of this facility. He's an ex nuclear sub XO who before that was running launch operations for Blue Origin. He knows what he's doing in building things. And another neighbor - although I only met him few times via our mutual kids being in same class - is the brain guy with two PhDs in nuclear engineering. I think he knows what they are designing. Plus we both drive same model car with custom license plates, his is nuclear-themed. Points!
  • Drblessing 3y ago
    That's awesome. What's the reception in the town of the new plant?
    • danielodievich 3y ago
      Misunderstanding. I am not in Wyoming. We're all in Seattle area, near Bill Gates... well, near enough.
• wolverine876 3y ago
  How hard would it be to use all the heat to generate usable energy, rather than discarding a bunch of it via coolant? I don't know much about nuclear reactors and I'm sure I'm not the first to think of it, and I'd guess it's quite a bit of heat - but then it's quite a bit of usable energy.
  • RhodesianHunter 3y ago
    That's exactly what it's doing. The problem is not getting rid of excess heat, it's that the heat causes wear and maintenance issues due to pressure, needed pumping, etc.
• Aleksdev 3y ago
  “ I’ll start with improved safety. Keep in mind that America’s current fleet of nuclear plants has been operating safely for decades—in fact, in terms of lives lost, nuclear power is by far the safest way to produce energy.” Exactly, everyone has panic attacks when you mention any accident at a nuclear plant. When the majority of these plants are extremely safe.
• Drblessing 3y ago
  Cool now hook it up to Bitcoin miners
• Drblessing 3y ago
  The anti-nuclear sentiment on this board is perplexing.... Way to go! I'm excited for the future of Nuclear fission, it's clearly going to be an important part of the sustainable future.
• 8bitsrule 3y ago
  It'll be interesting to see who'll agree to insure this nuke.
• astrange 3y ago
  This title sounds like the opening to a Tom Scott video.
• csense 3y ago
  Sodium metal reacts explosively with water. Sure, it's fine when working as designed, but this piece aims to be reassuring people about disaster scenarios. And it's easy to imagine a disaster where part of the plant gets physically damaged and the sodium's exposed to the outside world, possibly including rain or flooding. So why sodium? What does sodium accomplish that can't be done equally well with a cheap non-explosive metal like aluminum or iron?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • 93po 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor
• ttfkam 3y ago
  > I can’t overstate how welcoming the people of Kemmerer are being. That may be true, but I can't help but think billionaires are horrible judges of this. Most folks are very polite to the people who cut huge checks. They also do not react normally around famous people. Folks may be great in great communities, but I really don't think famous billionaires are reliable observers of these qualities. I would be far more likely to trust a poor nobody to suss out what a town is really like. Nothing brings out an honest accounting of character better than having nothing to gain from an interaction.