baking

38 ms·

361.
by baking 7y ago
The Kilopower reactor uses a chain reaction to trigger fission so the U-235 will be depleted much faster than the half-life. Wikipedia says its operational life is 12-15 years.
362.
by baking 7y ago
Do you know if the new designs proposed using thermophotovoltaics and silicon-carbide pellets are more efficient than traditional RTGs in their use of plutonium? Eli Yablonovitch mentions work being done at Berkely: https://www.
363.
by baking 7y ago
The original builder felt strongly enough about the oak beams to plant replacements. The restorers, or whoever hired them, did not. Perhaps they knew that 500 years in the future there would be better alternatives and were not as locked i
364.
by baking 7y ago
You still need a one meter thick blanket of lithium to capture the neutrons from the D-T reaction (and to generate more Tritium) so you are looking at modular 500MW reactors, although locating multiple reactors on the same site makes sense
365.
by baking 7y ago
Further Edit: The numbers are for SPARC which is about a 1.65 meter radius. 3 meters is the smallest size for a power plant, so on the order of $1.2 billion for the magnets assuming no significant decrease in material cost.
366.
by baking 7y ago
The limiting factor for high temperature superconductor magnets will likely be the mechanical strength of the structural steel holding the magnets together, not the limitations of the HTS. This is not a bad thing, just that the HTS are so
367.
by baking 7y ago
This. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is basically the earth's thermostat. The amount of energy coming from the sun is constant. It must be balanced by the thermal radiation leaving the upper atmosphere. But the more CO2 there is,
368.
by baking 7y ago
As an aside, one of the design goals of the Commonwealth Fusion/MIT team was to lower the construction cost of HTS magnets to 100% of the material cost. So something like $100M for the superconducting tapes and another $100M to build
369.
by baking 7y ago
Seems the opposite to me. Congestion and pedestrians present the greatest challenges for driverless cars. Also, they will only increase congestion both by increasing the number of cars on the streets and by being overly cautious.
370.
by baking 7y ago
I have long argued that the leap is not "over the chasm of uncertainty" but a "leap into the abyss." I don't have a reference handy to make my point, but it was the conclusion I drew from reading Fear and Trembling
371.
by baking 7y ago
Step 1. In the interest of "simplicity" and hiding details from users, make more and more functionality only available through the search box. Step 2. Move the search box to an annoying position on the task bar. Step 3. Give user
372.
by baking 7y ago
This is the opposite of alarmist. A 3mm/year SLR is pretty much the best-case scenario. An alarmist but still possible scenario would be 3 meter SLR from the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
373.
by baking 7y ago
Also, a 100-year flood is a misnomer. It is a flood that has a 1% chance of happening in the current year. It does not attempt to assess what the probability of a flood will be in 50 or 100 years.
374.
by baking 7y ago
A few years go, I heard that Florida was updating its flood maps from the 1970s. Having a number of family members living in Florida I checked out the updated maps only to find that they had only made relatively minor adjustments to the pr
375.
by baking 7y ago
There are edges and corners but I haven't swum the complete edge yet.
376.
by baking 7y ago
EDIT: Actually, my father is still alive and his grandfather was born in 1844. No second wives involved.
377.
by baking 7y ago
My grandfather was born in 1885.
378.
by baking 7y ago
Thermo-photovoltaics are a reasonable alternative to the internal combustion engines for the hybrid car of the future. Would probably run off methane or a 90/10 methane/hydrogen mix.
379.
by baking 7y ago
These are thin-film, light-weight, and flexible. Hanergy owned Alta Devices has a Gallium Arsenide lift-off process that produces the world-record efficiency for single junction PV.
380.
by baking 7y ago
HN won't let you edit a comment after a certain amount of time has passed, thus a second reply with the links.
381.
by baking 7y ago
Here a some experts you might want to listen to: https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-to-shut-down-a-n... https://whatisnuclear.com/decay-heat.html "In risk assessments, loss of decay heat remov
382.
by baking 7y ago
I don't know what experts you are listening to, but the idea of shutting down a nuclear reactor by lowering the control rods when the sun shines or the wind blows is just plain silly, for economic and safety reasons. Maybe for some fu
383.
by baking 7y ago
Chernobyl happened during a scheduled shut-down test that was delayed by 10 hours because there was higher than expected electricity demand. They tried to speed-up the shut-down and the results did not go as expected. I think it may be a
384.
by baking 7y ago
Excellent point. This should be the top comment. Buying up cheap solar and wind power during peak supply times and storing it for peak demand times should be more cost effective than building expensive gas/steam plants which would on
385.
by baking 7y ago
Learn from history. Nuclear power with all its cost overruns and other issues claimed 15% of the US electric market in 15 years. Where is solar after 40 years? The difference is building factories to produce cells which are made into modu
386.
by baking 7y ago
Current PV factories can only provide about 15% of the total energy need if they run at maximum capacity over the next 40 years. (Maybe much less if panels need to be replaced every 20-30 years.) Since the existing factories are losing mo
387.
by baking 7y ago
What do you see as providing the majority of baseline load by 2060?
388.
by baking 7y ago
Are you saying that fusion plants will face the same regulatory issues that fission plants experience? Again, I'm not sure what your point is.
389.
by baking 7y ago
Honestly, I think you are comparing apples to oranges. Average cost overrun for US nuclear fission plants was 207 percent, primarily due to mid-construction revisions and additional regulation. [ https://www.cbo.gov/sites&#
390.
by baking 7y ago
It's never clear what you are really arguing for. Why argue A>B and B>C if all you are trying to say is that A>C? Solar with long-term chemical energy storage should play a huge role, but I think it is too soon to say if one

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