8 ms·

below and penetrating the water table with the potential for short and long half-life transuranic fissile products and a path of least resistance for any runawa

below and penetrating the water table with the potential for short and long half-life transuranic fissile products and a path of least resistance for any runaway conditions which is directly to an uncontained well head... with the extra bonus of installation proposed in 'spent' hydrocarbon bearing regions which implies reduced density substrates with all the tiny seismic outcomes and risks. perfectly safe /s

cyberax 3mo ago
We can then build a primary school on top! And use the water from the well for heating directly. What could possibly go wrong!?!?
- stavros 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Ma8ee 3mo ago
    We don’t need any new and untested technology to solve to stop spewing out greenhouse gases. We just need to scale up current green tech. It’s not know how and technology that is lacking, it is political will.
    - stavros 3mo ago
      "We don't need to research any more potential solutions to this existential problem we're facing" is certainly a take.
      - Ma8ee 3mo ago
        I don't say we shouldn't do research. What I do say is that we do have all the technology we need. And more importantly, we don't have the time to wait for some future technology that potentially could solve all our problems. The climate disaster has already started (and this [0] is not "the new normal", this is just the beginning, a hint of what we should expect). The only reason we are in this shithole is because of the lack of political will. It would have been comparable trivial to solve if we just had started 30 years ago when scientists started to yell about that it was getting urgent. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jun/24/europe-heatwave-live-news-updates-uk-record-breaking-temperatures-italy-red-alert https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jun/24/europe-he...
        leonidasrup 3mo ago
        We don't need new technology, it took France only about 20 years to replace it's coal and oil based electric generation with nuclear power generation (between 1976 and 2000). Because of lack of political will in US and many European countries we continued to burn fuels to generate electric energy. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... Developing countries like China and India prioritized cheap coal power generation.
    - leonidasrup 3mo ago
      If by "we" you mean the whole world, then we have to do a gigantic scale up of the current green tech, as current green tech produces on minuscule part of the global primary energy. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
  - cyberax 3mo ago
    With this proposal? There are very few things that will NOT go wrong. I'm very pro-nuclear, but these kinds of projects are just scams.
- leonidasrup 3mo ago
  For example in Finland there is research done for nuclear district heating. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/fourth-finnish-municipality-to-assess-nuclear-district-heating https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/fourth-finnish-m... "Feasibility of small modular reactors for decarbonizing district heating systems: a case study of the Helsinki metropolitan area" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002954932500439X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002954932... Haiyang’s District Heating Project in China https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/carbon-free-heating-keeping-chinese-city-warm-and-clean https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/carbon-free-heating-kee...
  - cyberax 3mo ago
    The USSR built a nuclear district heating system in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) but never commissioned it because of the general anti-nuclear sentiment at that time. It's certainly possible and not even very hard (by nuclear standards) because the reactor can operate at ambient pressure. The biggest issue is inefficiency and cost of district heating except for places like Finland. It's now cheaper to install heatpumps instead.
    - leonidasrup 3mo ago
      It's also about use of "waste" heat of an existing nuclear plant, similar to many Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) power plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant is used for nuclear district heating. "Upon development of a district heating supply network in the town of Trnava near Bohunice NPP, V2 switched to co-generation. Part of this system is a heat feeder line commissioned in 1987. In 1997, a heat feeder line to Leopoldov and Hlohovec was created, branching off from the Trnava line." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohunice_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohunice_Nuclear_Power_Plant There are plans to implement this also in Mochovce Nuclear Power Station. https://www.nucnet.org/news/slovakian-utility-plans-district-heating-from-mochovce-nuclear-power-station-1-3-2025 https://www.nucnet.org/news/slovakian-utility-plans-district...
- CuriouslyC 3mo ago
  Only if the primary school is exclusively for the children of oligarchs.
UltraSane 3mo ago
The nuclear fuel is contained inside a reactor vessel. The water pressure just allows it to be much cheaper. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2419/ML24191A372.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2419/ML24191A372.pdf
- willis936 3mo ago
  Page 7 looks like a single point of failure in an unmaintainable device that would result in a well of contaminated water a mile deep that passes through the water table that could never be fixed. This sounds like the worst idea I've ever heard.
  - synctext 3mo ago
    Yeah, 76cm (30 inch) bore hole drilling with standard oil&grass rig. Fill with unshielded nuclear reactor of novel type: super skinny. Gently lower down until depth of 1 mile is reached. Repeat 1000x for a 1 GWe power plant. What could possibly go wrong? Best horror story of the year in 15 slides.
    - UltraSane 3mo ago
      Please explain exactly what you think can go wrong.
      - pphysch 3mo ago
        Seismic activity collapses the well, trapping the nuke underground, pressure find a way to escape via polluting a "faraway" aquifer, or it doesn't escape and you have a man-made volcano in the works
        UltraSane 3mo ago
        Not a plausible scenario. The entire point is that by putting these a mile deep that they will self seal if they meltdown. They can't create a volcano because they are only 15MW. If the reactor cracks the radioactive fuel can only contaminate the water at the very bottom of the shaft because it is a mile deep.
cucumber3732842 3mo ago
I greatly dislike this sort of "doesn't work perfectly everywhere by default therefore doesn't work" take. The steam engine didn't replace all the mules at once. It should be pretty trivial to pick and choose geologies and depth where it is safe. Maybe that's a lot of places. Maybe that's a few. But it should be trivial regardless.
- bronson 3mo ago
  > it should be trivial regardless. So should nuclear fission reactors. The concept is absurdly simple. In practice, however ...

cyberax 3mo ago

We can then build a primary school on top! And use the water from the well for heating directly. What could possibly go wrong!?!?

stavros 3mo ago
[flagged]
- Ma8ee 3mo ago
  We don’t need any new and untested technology to solve to stop spewing out greenhouse gases. We just need to scale up current green tech. It’s not know how and technology that is lacking, it is political will.
  - stavros 3mo ago
    "We don't need to research any more potential solutions to this existential problem we're facing" is certainly a take.
    - Ma8ee 3mo ago
      I don't say we shouldn't do research. What I do say is that we do have all the technology we need. And more importantly, we don't have the time to wait for some future technology that potentially could solve all our problems. The climate disaster has already started (and this [0] is not "the new normal", this is just the beginning, a hint of what we should expect). The only reason we are in this shithole is because of the lack of political will. It would have been comparable trivial to solve if we just had started 30 years ago when scientists started to yell about that it was getting urgent. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jun/24/europe-heatwave-live-news-updates-uk-record-breaking-temperatures-italy-red-alert https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jun/24/europe-he...
      - leonidasrup 3mo ago
        We don't need new technology, it took France only about 20 years to replace it's coal and oil based electric generation with nuclear power generation (between 1976 and 2000). Because of lack of political will in US and many European countries we continued to burn fuels to generate electric energy. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profil... Developing countries like China and India prioritized cheap coal power generation.
  - leonidasrup 3mo ago
    If by "we" you mean the whole world, then we have to do a gigantic scale up of the current green tech, as current green tech produces on minuscule part of the global primary energy. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy
- cyberax 3mo ago
  With this proposal? There are very few things that will NOT go wrong. I'm very pro-nuclear, but these kinds of projects are just scams.
leonidasrup 3mo ago
For example in Finland there is research done for nuclear district heating. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/fourth-finnish-municipality-to-assess-nuclear-district-heating https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/fourth-finnish-m... "Feasibility of small modular reactors for decarbonizing district heating systems: a case study of the Helsinki metropolitan area" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002954932500439X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002954932... Haiyang’s District Heating Project in China https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/carbon-free-heating-keeping-chinese-city-warm-and-clean https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/carbon-free-heating-kee...
- cyberax 3mo ago
  The USSR built a nuclear district heating system in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) but never commissioned it because of the general anti-nuclear sentiment at that time. It's certainly possible and not even very hard (by nuclear standards) because the reactor can operate at ambient pressure. The biggest issue is inefficiency and cost of district heating except for places like Finland. It's now cheaper to install heatpumps instead.
  - leonidasrup 3mo ago
    It's also about use of "waste" heat of an existing nuclear plant, similar to many Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) power plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration Bohunice Nuclear Power Plant is used for nuclear district heating. "Upon development of a district heating supply network in the town of Trnava near Bohunice NPP, V2 switched to co-generation. Part of this system is a heat feeder line commissioned in 1987. In 1997, a heat feeder line to Leopoldov and Hlohovec was created, branching off from the Trnava line." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohunice_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohunice_Nuclear_Power_Plant There are plans to implement this also in Mochovce Nuclear Power Station. https://www.nucnet.org/news/slovakian-utility-plans-district-heating-from-mochovce-nuclear-power-station-1-3-2025 https://www.nucnet.org/news/slovakian-utility-plans-district...
CuriouslyC 3mo ago
Only if the primary school is exclusively for the children of oligarchs.

UltraSane 3mo ago

The nuclear fuel is contained inside a reactor vessel. The water pressure just allows it to be much cheaper. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2419/ML24191A372.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2419/ML24191A372.pdf

willis936 3mo ago
Page 7 looks like a single point of failure in an unmaintainable device that would result in a well of contaminated water a mile deep that passes through the water table that could never be fixed. This sounds like the worst idea I've ever heard.
- synctext 3mo ago
  Yeah, 76cm (30 inch) bore hole drilling with standard oil&grass rig. Fill with unshielded nuclear reactor of novel type: super skinny. Gently lower down until depth of 1 mile is reached. Repeat 1000x for a 1 GWe power plant. What could possibly go wrong? Best horror story of the year in 15 slides.
  - UltraSane 3mo ago
    Please explain exactly what you think can go wrong.
    - pphysch 3mo ago
      Seismic activity collapses the well, trapping the nuke underground, pressure find a way to escape via polluting a "faraway" aquifer, or it doesn't escape and you have a man-made volcano in the works
      - UltraSane 3mo ago
        Not a plausible scenario. The entire point is that by putting these a mile deep that they will self seal if they meltdown. They can't create a volcano because they are only 15MW. If the reactor cracks the radioactive fuel can only contaminate the water at the very bottom of the shaft because it is a mile deep.

cucumber3732842 3mo ago

I greatly dislike this sort of "doesn't work perfectly everywhere by default therefore doesn't work" take. The steam engine didn't replace all the mules at once. It should be pretty trivial to pick and choose geologies and depth where it is safe. Maybe that's a lot of places. Maybe that's a few. But it should be trivial regardless.

bronson 3mo ago
> it should be trivial regardless. So should nuclear fission reactors. The concept is absurdly simple. In practice, however ...