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Nuclear reactors a mile underground promise safe, cheap power
- themaninthedark 2y agoNice! Just not sure how cheap a mile deep bore hole is....
- martijnarts 2y agoSomewhere up to $5 million, according to this r/AskEngineering thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1dfzwxd/estimating_cost_for_deep_well_drilling_4_miles_or/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1dfzwxd/estim...
- themaninthedark 2y agoNot as high as I thought it might be, as long as it is less costly than the containment vessel that they are looking to replace it would be a net.
- daneel_w 2y agoWhich as with everything else in construction these days ultimately ends up taking twice as long and costing thrice the initial estimate. Also, this is the cost for a bore hole. The cost for something with enough diameter to house a reactor will be some orders of magnitude higher.
- martijnarts 2y agoThe article mentions 76 cm width for the reactor they're designing, and oil wells can be up to a meter wide[0], so that price estimate would probably be similar then. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well#Drilling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_well#Drilling
- defrost 2y ago1,600 m vertical depth through hard rock at hydrocarbon extraction bore widths is likely 120 days, onshore @ $15,000 US per day (perhaps) + casing costs + everything else. YMMV - figure pulled from Drilling Costs Estimation for Hydrocarbon Wells (2015) https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7569/jsee.2014.629520/pdf https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7569/jsee.2014.629... that's a rough $2 million basement estimation (sans casing + headwork) with many complicating factors that can easily blow it up.
- pjc50 2y agoGiven Hinkley Point C is currently at US$58bn estimated and still not open, a mere $2m for a hole sounds very affordable. Could very quickly spend more than that in meetings.
- defrost 2y agoThat's the bare minimum for a single unadorned hole to that depth (? there's a lot of detail in the linked report, costs may blow up a bit as depth increases, that detail didn't leap out at me). It would cause me no great surprise if "a sufficient hole"; widened, maybe three actual close holes for down pipe, up pipe, and reactor vessel, with casings and head mechanics, came to $50 million. Your point stands, in the great scheme of capital projects of this scale the hole boring and fitting is cheap. Sixteen odd years ago I tracked, with a group, every global mineral exploration activity and subsequent development. When it came time to launch a mine, deemed to be feasible, and raise forward capital for building plant and processing our lower bounds cut off point was $50 million US - anything smaller than that was too small scale to bring to the attention of our subscribers. Capital costs for mining plants, power plants, oil and gas extraction run high - and the G20 costs for nuclear plants are fully in the billions.
- api 2y agoIf you can drill that deep, go deeper and use the free planet-mass fission reactor in the Earth's core.
- southernplaces7 2y agoYes, and considering the cost of a nuclear plant a mile beneath the earth, just spending on geothermal would probably be cheaper, but "go deeper" isn't quite so simple either. Even in places with above average volcanism or a thinner barrier between the surface and mantle, you'd need to drill at least a couple miles down unless you're very lucky, and that extra mile (as a likely minimum) makes a big difference on cost and effort. The plasticity, or ductility, of rock increases at higher pressures and temperatures, making it harder to drill through it, thus making it rapidly more expensive for additional units of depth beyond a certain point.
- froh 2y agolike so? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy
- 082349872349872 2y agoWe don't seem to have even made it through the crust to the mantle (after which ~2'900km to the core) yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovičić_discontinuity#Exploration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohorovičić_discontinuity#Expl...
- pfdietz 2y agoThere is no significant fission reactor in the Earth's core. If there were, we could detect the antineutrinos from fission product decay. I'm not sure where this idea came from. Perhaps from the mistaken notion that uranium, being heavy, sinks into the core? Uranium is actually highly enriched in the Earth's continental crust, by a factor of about 1000 vs. the planet as a whole.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- geod_of_ix 2y agoWhere to even begin. 1. Temperature - The higher the temperature difference, the faster the loss of heat. How will the steam maintain it's energy (temp) in that long pipe. 2. Drilling each borehole is no small feat, and uses lots of energy and materials, all of which have associated embodied energy costs. Is is really worth it once all that work is done? 3. Geothermal. Interesting analogy, why not just use that instead. Boom, no additional radioactivity required. This whole things sounds very Rube Goldberg machine like.
- themaninthedark 2y ago1. We currently produce steam using geothermal in similar situations. This is not a lot of information on depth on Wikipedia but I did see there was an abandoned plan to drill down 2mi at The Geysers and Reykjanes is 8,900 ft deep(1.6 mi) so I wouldn't worry about the ability to minimize heat loss. 2. The idea is to use the earth as a substitute for the containment building, so as long as the cost of drilling are less than those costs, it would be a net. 3. Geothermal is not readily available at shallow depths everywhere. The deeper you go, the higher the costs. Also with some types of geothermal you run the risk of earthquakes, as they use the same process as fracking to develop the wells.
- hughesjj 2y agoAlso for 1., why does the steam have to come all the way back up to spin a turbine? Can't you just have the Turbine down the shaft too? I get that there's other tradeoffs than that, but I figure the closer to the source the less leakage/parasitic loss there'd be Unless the concern is that there's too little energy after going through the turbine that the water may condense and fall back down the "wrong side" of the pipe and add a bunch of resistance to the turbine.. although I'd imagine it might still be cheaper to do some one way valves and pump out the drainage pans while still being a net energy producer
- j-a-a-p 2y agoAnd, supply of coolant versus the delivery of steam is constructed in a mile long heat exchanger. Perhaps this can be solved by high pressure, high flow - but if it for some reason halts for just a minute OP's little reactor is already in the China syndrome mode.
- teqsun 2y agoDrilling deep into the planet for power just reminds me of Doom.
- hammock 2y agoFor those curious, for all of history, mankind has probably only dug a few dozen or so holes a mile deep or deeper. It’s not easy
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- yxhuvud 2y agoKeeping things cool at that depth also seems like a challenge.
- shagie 2y agoWhich would then suggest the alternate approach of just push down cold water and get back hot water without any nuclear reactor at the bottom of the hole. We're not talking hot hot everywhere, but possibly still useful. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-average-temperature-gradient-for-planet-Earth-is-20-per-kilometre-In-many-areas_fig2_352197150 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-average-temperature-... > The average temperature gradient for planet Earth is 20 °C per kilometre. In many areas around the world the gradient is higher, and the temperature increases at a faster rate with depth below the ground. With a temperature gradient of between 50 and 100 °C geothermal resources are more readily accessible. Above 20 °C geothermal waters can be used for direct uses like greenhouses, aquaculture and district heating applying heat pumps. Above 75 °C the water is hot enough to be used for electricity generation using binary cycle technology. Above 160 °C flash steam generation can be used to produce clean, renewable electricity. Source: Geothermal Resources Council
- SkyPuncher 2y agoThis data suggests that 1 mile is common for oil wells: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_welldep_s1_a.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_welldep_s1_a.htm Obviously, that’s not a meter wide hole, but it’s clearly possible.
- n1b0m 2y agoWhat are the challenges involved which makes it so difficult?
- yobbo 2y agoFor a normal reactor, the energy for pumping/lifting that amount of cooling water consumes too much of the energy output. It's not too dissimilar from running a hydro energy turbine backwards.
- GardenLetter27 2y agoOr just use reactor designs that have a negative void coefficient and won't end up in a positive feedback loop. There are many to choose from now. The high cost of nuclear fission plants comes from deliberate government, petro-corporation and environmentalist attempts to kill it off (usually funded by petrostate interests like Russia, Qatar or oil corporations directly).
- pjc50 2y agoPeople keep forgetting about weapons proliferation.
- ElectronCharge 2y agoSure, the terrorists will dive right down the mile deep shaft to get non-weapons-grade material. /s Nation-states don’t have any problem getting uranium…and weapons proliferation isn’t a concern with any nuclear power. In other words, these could be installed widely in suitable US, British, French, Israeli, Russian and Chinese locations with no concern at all.
- foxyv 2y agoThat cat has been out of the bag for half a century. There are currently over 11 thousand warheads in existence. Enough to turn every major city in the world into a smoke plume that will blanket the earth for years to come. In addition, countries don't really use commercial reactors for breeding weapons grade materials anymore. Usually they will provision reactors specifically for that job. Like the Los Alamos Savana River facility. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4510010-plutonium-pits-us-nuclear-ambitions-sentinel/#:~:text=After%20Rocky%20Flats%20closed%20in,are%20not%20creating%20new%20plutonium https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4510010-plutonium-pits-us.... Also, there are a lot more ways to produce weapons grade nuclear materials now than there were in the 1970s when most of these weapons were created. The invention of lasers, high temperature superconducting magnets, higher quality centrifuge materials, and better particle accelerators have made the creation of weapons grade material way easier. In other words, when it comes to weapons proliferation, we are so utterly screwed. Only political change will ever reduce the number of weapons in existence. Commercial power production isn't even a factor.
- fulafel 2y agoIs this the beef? > Since the water column is a mile high, it would pressurize the reactor by its sheer weight, much like sticking it a mile under the sea, so no need for a pressurizer and the cooling system would be entirely passive. > In addition, being encased in solid rock far below any water table removes any need for a containment system. If things get really bad, fill in the shaft and cap it. Why is it cheaper to have this with a ready to activate shaft filling sarcophagus (and the redundant backup systems for that) vs doing it on the sea floor or land + a 0.1 mile deep hole?
- foxyv 2y agoThe sea floor is not a contained environment. Also it is far harder to access.
- moogly 2y agoIf drilling were cheap (it most definitely is not), geothermal would be the better option.
- willvarfar 2y agoDrilling has to be extremely cheap and the geothermal heat extremely high to be economical, which is why it makes sense in iceland but not mainstream. Drilling and putting a nuclear reactor underground, much shallower than the deepest coal mines, can be quite expensive and still be cheap as a part of the total cost of the nuclear power station?
- swader999 2y agoYet they go for oil at these depths even at the risk of a dry well.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoOn average, the Earth's crust is over 10 miles thick. There's a pretty big difference between drilling 1 mile and 10 miles - literally an order of magnitude.
- _ph_ 2y agoYou don't need to drill through the crust. A mile down the temperature will already be significantly up.
- foxyv 2y agoIn places where Geothermal is cheaper than this you will in fact see a lot of Geothermal wells. Geothermal works great in geologically active regions. This option works best in geologically inactive regions. The two options complement each other in my opinion.
- edelbitter 2y agoNot depending on industry specialists that have to retain talent & tools for a 15 year gap in their order books probably helps competing with complex containment structures. They can buy some fairly premium drill bits and still be the lowest bid, if only they can be trusted to promise more realistic service entry date than contemporary "13 years behind schedule" designs.
- floatrock 2y agoThe groundwater contamination angle seems a bit... hand-wavey? > In addition, being encased in solid rock far below any water table removes any need for a containment system. If things get really bad, fill in the shaft and cap it. "Solid rock" feels like there's a lot of geological asterisks there. How about the casing around that mile-deep hole? Where do you pump all the inevitable leaks? 9 out of 10 startups go bankrupt, what happens to the hole if the company (or the project-specific LLC) goes belly-up? "Just fill it up" is a bit disingenuous and ignores how groundwater tends to seep into everything given enough dozens of years... Texas is littered with half-capped polluting shale wells that were just kinda left there when the wells stopped being productive and the project-specific drilling LLC was dissolved when it hit the bankruptcy-by-design phase of the corporate lifecycle. Centuries of potential contamination feels like a risk that should have more than 2 sentences.
- littlestymaar 2y agoAre there a lot of places where there's any ground water at all at this depth?
- Arubis 2y ago> Nuclear fuel, even with all the processing costs included, only comes to about US$1,663 per kilogram (2.2 lb). Because nuclear fuel has such an incredible energy density, that's about 0.46 ¢/kWh – and the fuel costs keep dropping as the technology becomes more efficient. That’s…not actually cheap? As a consumer, I pay less than half that per kWh delivered at peak hours.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y agoI suspect you pay less than half of 0.46 $/kWh but not less than half of 0.46 ¢/kWh.
- Arubis 2y agoAh, you’re correct; I misread this as fractions of a dollar, not cents.
- eliaspro 2y agoYou might mix up Cent and Euro/Dollar here. Even the cheapest way to produce electricity nowadays (PV) isn't below 1 cent/kWh (production, not end-user costs) yet and your quote refers to only the costs of the fuel itself.
- jijijijij 2y agoI think you misread, or do you really pay less than half a cent per kWh?
- titzer 2y agoYes, the fuel costs less than half a cent per kWh. All the other costs dominate.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- j-a-a-p 2y agoAt peak hours (as in peak wind) energy cost is regularly negative. Looking at it this way will kill any energy business case.
- bilekas 2y agoAs others have said it seems that digging isn't cheap. My question is, is it even safe ? Surely if there is an accident or incident, there are the same issues if not more, groundwater pollution for example, risk of explosion, potentially causing further natural events such as earthquakes ? >so if it does manage to overheat, the nuclear reaction will automatically dampen itself down. This seems extremely blasé. "it will fix itself". By radiating the surrounding environment ? I am a believer in nuclear power. It can already be done safe and is being done safe in most cases. This isn't solving any real problem.
- francisofascii 2y agoAccording to the article, it is "encased in solid rock far below any water table", so maybe groundwater pollution isn't a concern.
- foobarian 2y agoIt seems that digging cost is pretty minor when compared to the usual cost of these projects. As far as safety, I would expect this depth to be below and away from any groundwater, so even with a meltdown there would be no effect on water sources. Presumably if something like Chernobyl happened they would bury the hole and the fuel would just melt its way further down without ill effect. There were plenty of underground nuclear tests already so some of the effects might be understood in practice as well.
- senectus1 2y agoAs someone that works in the mining industry... digging is not cheap. not cheap at all.
- itishappy 2y agoHow do you think it compares to construction of a plane-proof bunker?
- pjc50 2y agoHS2 estimating £33 million per kilometer, in the absolute best case of a horizontal fairly shallow tunnel through earth and clay. A 1km hole straight down? I suspect that's going to start at 100m and go up unforseeably from there. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a819fe740f0b623026984f5/HS2_Guide_to_Tunnelling_Costs.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a819fe740f0b... But! What's not apparent until you read the article is that the planned reactor is .. 76cm across. That is, it's designed to fit down an oil well. Effectively you get "artificial high temperature geothermal", a hot object buried deep underground that you circulate water past.
- danbruc 2y agoAccording to the company, if the reactor needs inspection or servicing, it can be hauled to the surface by cables in about an hour or two. What happens to the two one mile long pipes attached to the reactor?
- swader999 2y agoThey would be painted red and white so planes could see and avoid them.
- thesmok 2y agoPipes would either be flexible, or rigid but assembled in sections, so you'd disassemble the pipe while pulling it out.
- danbruc 2y agoThe flexible pipe has to be strong enough to withstand 160 bar, wide enough to allow the necessary flow, and at the top tolerate one mile of pipe - filled with water - pulling on it. I have no intuition how challenging that would be. Or maybe it does not have to be very flexible, after all submarine gas pipeline are also flexible to some extend. This seems the more realistic option to me if material science does not get in the way. On the other hand disassembling two miles of a segmented pipe like the ones used for oil drilling in an hour or two does sound pretty ambitious. Drilling pipes are - according to a quick search - up to 45 ft long, so one would have to unscrew more than 200 connections. One could use longer sections but that will probably complicate the handling at the surface and might not actually help in terms of time.
- thesmok 2y agoYes, it doesn't have to be very flexible. But every pipe is flexible to some extent. I'm thinking about my 25m deep well, with 32mm PE pipe, scaled up. It is flexible enough to be forcefully rolled up into a 5m diameter circle. When I've pulled it out, it has naturally bent into a big arch across my yard, under it's own weight. Scale that up in your imagination.
- pojzon 2y agoI dont know how to make cheap nuclear reactors. But molten salt ones are literally impossible to cause any harm. Cant explode, cant cause uncontrolled pollution, can be safely decomissioned whenever. But they are not cheap.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tiku 2y agoSeems a lot like the molten salt solution, in case of overheating melting a plug, allowing the nuclear material to flow to a safe container.
- BurningFrog 2y agoExisting nuclear reactors are already extremely safe, and they still can't be built because of safety concerns. The "you can't be 100% sure" argument is impossible to defeat, and I don't think this design will move the needle. It also provides the argument that wanting to bury reactors 1 mile deep shows how incredibly dangerous nuclear power really is.
- manvillej 2y agothere is pretty strong evidence that Nuclear energy is significantly safer than most energy production with the exception of wind & solar which are similarly as safe. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- jayd16 2y agoWell ok, they're as safe as long as we're extremely vigilant but does it then follow that we should be more relaxed about safety concerns? I don't think showing the stats is all that convincing to people when the worst case scenario is so impactful. My guess is we'll need to see newer safer designs before public options shift.
- foxyv 2y agoI would not describe the current nuclear power regulatory system as "Extremely Vigilant." More like "Extremely Litigious." I think lawyers have made more on nuclear power than concrete companies and nuclear engineers combined.
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoAnd unlike wind and solar can be used on-demand akin to coal, making it an extremely attractive option to run alongside renewables, especially year round. Solar panels are literally useless 75% of the year in at least 1/3rd of the US and we still rely on coal because of that. Sure, batteries may exist in the future that can handle solar, and maybe panels will exist in the future that will be more efficient, but we have technology now that can outpace renewables consistently and on-demand.
- troebr 2y agoI think it's interesting to read people voicing concerns and limitations of the projects in the comments (that's why I came to read them), but I was hoping more people would be excited about the idea. Even if it doesn't work out, I root for people who try out ideas like this. Every once in a while some crazy idea like breaking down atoms to generate electricity works out and we're all better off thanks to it.
- cesaref 2y agoIt sounds like geothermal without using the earth as the heat source. What benefits does this have over geothermal, which is proven and safe, and also ticks the 'non-nuclear' box which makes it considerably easier to convince a population to live next door to?
- criddell 2y agoJust guessing here, but I think it would have a much smaller footprint. Google tells me the largest geothermal power plant is in California and it's gigawatt scale and takes up something like 45 sq miles of space. The other factor might be location flexibility. You can probably dig a mile down just about anywhere but geothermal needs access to magma chambers. Are those everywhere?
- iSnow 2y ago>but geothermal needs access to magma chambers. No, not really. Geothermal can work wherever there's a big enough positive temperature anomaly in the ground. Rift systems with hydrothermal heat can work as well as regions over a deeper magma plume. Exploiting shallow magma chambers is only possible in a couple regions like Iceland.
- criddell 2y ago> can work wherever there's a big enough positive temperature anomaly in the ground And is that in as many places as you can dig a mile down? IS the temperature delta in those places on the same order of magnitude as when magma chambers are tapped? If not, gigawatt scale plants would take even more space, no?
- Bilal_io 2y agoI would imagine the scale. This would provide much more power compared to geothermal installed in the same square footage.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- poikroequ 2y agoI'm not commenting on the practicality or viability of this. Rather, I see a lot of commenters talking about cost. I understand some projects or technologies would literally be too expensive, but realistically, we need to move away from fossil fuels. We can't just keep polluting the Earth because it's cheaper than clean energy.
- karaterobot 2y ago> With its promise of limitless energy by breaking down matter itself, nuclear power has long held a utopian promise for humanity What a strange, science fictional way to describe fission! Surely it's not breaking down matter itself any more than burning wood or coal is. Would you say, about eating a sandwich, that it 'offers the promise of limitless energy by breaking down matter itself'?
- foxyv 2y agoThis is in fact how it works. You are taking a fraction of the mass of the Uranium and turning it into energy. Although limitless is a stretch. Maybe 100,000 years or so of energy with known deposits of thorium and uranium. Solar is a bit closer to "Limitless."
- hinkley 2y agoBy the time solar becomes a problem we have bigger issues. Namely the sun trying to eat the planet.
- foxyv 2y agoExactly! But at time scales over 10k years you may as well say limitless I suppose. By that point you are either extinct or living in O'Neill cylinders at Lagrange points throughout the Solar system and mining asteroids. If not already traveling to other solar systems. I think the safe bet is extinct, given how things are going right now.
- ElectronCharge 2y agoThose “known deposits” don’t include seawater, which is another giant source. It shouldn’t matter anyways, surely fusion will be here sooner rather than later…and possibly LENR.
- foxyv 2y agoNo kidding, and far before that point we will be having to build giant radiators to expel excess thermal energy or risk cooking our planet. The future is going to be absolutely nuts if we don't end up killing everyone.
- perlgeek 2y agoI cannot decide if this is ingenious, incredible dumb, or maybe both at the same time. Where does the "1 mile down" come from? That seems more like based on emotion than on science / engineering. If it isn't, I'd like to see some of the tradeoffs of different depths. I could imagine that drilling this deep might be the most expensive part, so if you could get away with, say, half of the depth, that would be quite the advantage. What do we know about the safety tradeoffs of putting a reactor that far underground? I'm not trying to shoot down the idea, it's just so unexpected that I feel I haven't even begun to think of the right questions yet.
- dist-epoch 2y ago> Where does the "1 mile down" come from? The general idea is probably "if anything bad happens", nobody will really care, we'll just seal the shaft.
- foxyv 2y agoI believe that the 1 mile down comes from the current proposed methods of disposing of nuclear waste. Essentially, you place the reactor in it's final resting place, removing the need to transport it to a disposal site. Depending on the site you would bury either deeper or shallower depending on the geological stability of the region. https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-store-nuclear-waste-can-it-survive-100000-years https://www.science.org/content/article/finland-built-tomb-s...
- schiffern 2y ago>the pressure of water at a mile deep is 160 atmospheres, the same as that found in the thick pressure vessel of the standard PWR. Technically it's about 1.03 miles, but they round to 1 mile. https://www.google.com/search?q=160+atmospheres+%2F+%281+kg%2Fliter+*+9.80665+m%2Fs%5E2%29+in+miles https://www.google.com/search?q=160+atmospheres+%2F+%281+kg%...
- loeg 2y agoIt's just dumb.
- cwassert 2y agoAnd what about the cost of safely storing nuclear waste for thousands of years?
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoHumans haven't figured out how to economically build something watertight and structurally sound for 30000 years... most structures will rarely last over 65 years without constant maintenance. Anything around water, acid rain, or anaerobic bacteria will fall apart in time. All mines eventually fill with water, and collapse in time. Putting the PR BS in a hole in the ground does not make it safer. lol =3
- bunderbunder 2y agoThe practical arguments in favor of nuclear seem to assume that new nuclear technology only needs to compete with old nuclear technology. Let's set aside the safety argument. They're claiming $0.46 per kilowatt-hour for a technology they haven't developed yet. I believe that's about an order of magnitude more expensive than what wind can do right now. Heck, right now my local utility's website is reporting a retail spot price of seven cents per kilowatt-hour. Maybe paying six times as much is worthwhile for the reduced carbon footprint relative to fossil fuels, but if that's the argument then just say that rather than weakening your position by calling it "cheap" when it's easy to see that it isn't.
- elil17 2y agoThe article quotes that number as the cost of the actual nuclear fuel. That number makes no sense - I'm sure it's a typo. They probably meant to say 4/10ths of a cent per megawatt hour. Of course, most of the actual costs come from capital/operations.
- Bedon292 2y agoThey say 0.46 ¢/kWh. Its a cent sign rather than a dollar sign. It is less than half a cent per kWh for the fuel. I also found this [1] chart from 2022 which has nuclear fuel costs around 0.6 ¢/kWh and fossil fuel costs around 3.2 ¢/kWh. So the 0.46 would be 1/7 rather than 6x. [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html
- Sohcahtoa82 2y ago> They're claiming $0.46 per kilowatt-hour No they're not, they're claiming 0.46 ¢/kWh, as in $0.0046/kWh. That is insanely cheap. You could completely charge an EV for under 50 cents. My electricity is $0.11/kWh and ranges from $100-300/month depending on season. At $0.0046/kWh, that would reduce to $4-12/month.
- emsign 2y agoThis only works in geologically inactive regions. It's like Solar Roadways but for nuclear.
- rbanffy 2y agoPerhaps a safer approach would be to keep the steam cycle closed and only have power cables coming up the shaft. The module would need to be much taller, but size is still neglectable in relation to the depth of the well itself.
- rappatic 2y agoGreat, I'd love our groundwater polluted with nuclear waste. Seriously, let's not overthink this. Nuclear power is very safe, even aboveground, if the necessary precautions are taken. This has been known for a while now.
- hinkley 2y agoChernobyl nearly contaminated all the wells in Eastern Europe for tens of thousands of years. To go a mile down you have to go past the aquifers and then anything that happens to the shaft after an accident causes the same problems.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoEvery kid born after the 1960's has slightly radioactive eye lens, and their parents did not. Peoples hubris is very dangerous, but maybe Fusion will solve all our problems one day. lol =3
- hinkley 2y agoYeah isn’t something like 40% of your background radiation exposure due to nuclear testing before the test bans?
- Dig1t 2y agoEven if it's unnecessary I still think this is a great idea. It's obvious that the people who are scared of nuclear power are not interested in the actual safety data, it's that radiation is scary and has bad connotations. If it will put people at ease, then just do it so we can finally have nuclear energy.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoPutting this underground does not make it safer, but rather complicates maintenance of holding back the ever encroaching water.
- honestjohn 2y ago"A mile underground" and "cheap" don't seem to go together.
- hinkley 2y agoHas everyone forgotten when we had an oil well leaking .8 miles underwater and we couldn’t do shit to stop it?
- honestjohn 2y agoAre you talking about me or the article?
- hinkley 2y agoThe article. Working a mile down is at the limits of our capabilities. In an emergency situation it’s nearly unobtanium. Like Kernighan’s Law for engineering.
- honestjohn 2y agoYeah, it seems nuts. Nuclear submarines have proven our ability to operate a small reactor a km underwater, but under land is much harder.
- hinkley 2y agoBut at 1 atm. If the pressure vessel fails they autoscram the reactor don’t they? I mean assuming they didn’t get hit with a torpedo.
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoNuclear needs to deal with the cost issue first. It is woefully uncompetitive. I failed to see how one mile deep shaft is going to help that, standard boring or not If you're wanted to dig a mile down for a massive piece of infrastructure, wouldn't geothermal be more price competitive at that point? I mean part of the problem with meltdowns is the pollution of groundwater. "It's beneath the water table" yeah sure, there's no way fission products can go up a shaft. No way. So what safety does this really address besides paranoia? I mean I guess if you have a runaway solid rod fuel reaction, you can just drop a bomb down there and blow the fuel rods apart.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoIt is a loss leader non-renewable technology. Initially the $/kWh is actually one of the lowest cost services, but this hides the $9B subsidy the public pays for construction and the 30000 year waste stewardship. Some people think easy solutions are without tradeoffs. Yet fission power only makes sense for remote regions and space missions. Renewables overtook coal this year in some regions. As the economics are an unstoppable force, that will silence the hubris of those that like dangerous fission toys. My bet is on goat carts for our future =3
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoWhich is why MSRs that use allegedly almost all the fuel seems like such a potential to feasible cost effective nuclear. It's not just the economic cost of waste, it's the publicity/politics around waste transport and storage.
- preisschild 2y agoNuclear reactors in a bunker (like most are built) are also relatively safe and it doesn't need that much tunneling. Nuclear power plant capital costs are already high, tunneling up an area a mile underground would be stupid for most cases.
- cratermoon 2y agoSurely digging a reactor-sized cave a mile below the surface is the exact opposite of "cheap".
- Nifty3929 2y agoThis seems of a piece with trying to directly address the concerns of those who are opposed to nuclear power. This does not work, because most of those folks actually are not interested in nuclear power at all, and they will never lack for reasons not to do it. This is true of almost anything: It's always pretty easy to come up with reasons not to do something. Those who oppose will simply keep coming up with new reasons not to do it. They will only accept a reduction in usage. Anything that allows us to maintain our existing level of energy consumption will not be tolerated.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoFission power is a loss leader non-renewable technology. Initially the $/kWh is actually one of the lowest cost services, but this hides the $9B subsidy the public pays for construction and the 30000 year waste stewardship. Some people think easy solutions are without tradeoffs. Yet fission power only makes sense for remote regions and space missions. Renewables overtook coal this year in some regions. As the economics are an unstoppable force, that will silence the hubris of those that like dangerous toys. My bet is on goat carts for our future =3
- Nifty3929 2y agoI think you're making my point for me. 30000 year stewardship? 20 years ago it was only a 10000 year stewardship. Either way, it doesn't make much sense. For one thing, radioactivity is related to half-life. Basically the more radioactive something is, the shorter the half-life and therefore the less time you have to deal with it. When something has a long half-life, that is almost by definition less radioactive. And it's not so hard. Water blocks most of the worst radiation anyway. More importantly, 10,000 or 30,000 years or whatever is just a really, really long time. Storing and "stewarding" the waste is already a sufficiently solved problem. All of the material your family would use in your entire life would fit in a shoebox, and can be stored in a few gallons of water safely. Borrowing hypothetical problems from that far into the future is an example of exactly what I'm talking about: an effectively un-addressable concern that serves only as a placeholder for "I don't want to. Use less energy." The reason that solar and wind haven't fallen victim to this is that they don't scale well enough, and would force us to reduce consumption. If they were on track to increase our overall energy production and use, they would lose support.
- jcgrillo 2y agoNaively it seems like a ridiculous idea to put your boiler 1+mi away from your turbine.. am I wrong? EDIT: There's also the fact that your steam is fighting a 1mi vertical column worth of pressure.. If your steam at the boiler is limited to 600°F that seems counterproductive to put it 1mi underground?
- tra3 2y agoWhat is the story for spent fission fuel? I believe that was always a huge issue.
- johnea 2y agoOr, place them 150M kilometers out in space and orbit the planet around them...
- acidburnNSA 2y agoThis was called the "Deep Well Reactor" concept back in 1984. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012182435&seq=73 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012182435&se... You have serious constraints in neutronics when constrained to a drillable borehole diameter and low-enriched uranium. The radial peaking will be high. May still be an ok tradeoff.
- credit_guy 2y agoThis is so silly, it might be just a form of trolling. A nuclear power plant is a nuclear rector plus a thermal power plant, i.e. a turbine. Even if the safety of the reactor is 100%, what happens if there's an accident with the turbine? How do you perform maintenance? Sure, you have elevators to move people up and down, but how do you move things that are several tons up and down? A typical fuel rod assembly is about 4-5 meters long. The efficiency of the thermal power plant is about 30%, which means you need to dispose of 70% of the heat coming from the reactor. With regular nuclear power plants you use cooling towers; how are you going to do this when you are 1 mile underground? Do you install some pipes that bring cold water from the surface? Sounds reasonable until you do the math and find out you need to move 10 tons per second. The pumps that need to push the water up will need to fight the gravity of a column of water one mile high and push 10 tons each second. The math is not that difficult (potential energy = mgh), such pumps need to have a power of about 150 MW. That's ignoring the friction of the water in the pipe. But that's a big thing to ignore for a mile-long pipe. Oh, and the pressure at the bottom is 165 bar, about the same as the pressure in the reactor. You can avoid this huge pressure by creating moving the water up and down in stages, but that complicates the engineering, and increases the construction and maintenance cost.
- rekabis 2y agoGo two miles down, and the Earth is hot enough to turn that water into steam all by itself. Why bother with the nuclear reactor, then?