• Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      22 hours ago

      Even ignoring AI datacenter builds, we still need clean energy. I would be all for nuclear fission if it were at all economically viable. It just isn’t.

      • Graydon@canada.masto.host
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        19 hours ago

        @frezik there is an economic case for three nuclear reactor applications.

        Medical isotopes need to come from somewhere, and so far as I’m aware, you can’t do all of them with particle accelerators.

        Marine power; your 250,000 DWT bulk transport or large container ship pollute significantly, can’t go solar, and marine nuclear is not obviously a bad technical option. (They can maybe go with some sort of fuel cell, but that’s not developed tech.)

        High-latitude baseline power.

        @kgMadee2

        • fullsquare@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          15 hours ago

          high latitude is sort of served by hydro because there’s lot of river per person in some of areas that are in any significant way populated (norway, russian north)

          medical isotopes are research reactor thing because of frequent loading/unloading - either that or some kind of channel reactors so either CANDU or RBMK. neither are exactly industry standard

          marine power requires small reactors = way more enriched than usual sub 5% = expensive and a lot of diplomatic noise about proliferation

          • Graydon@canada.masto.host
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            14 hours ago

            @fullsquare Sub reactors use enriched for service life (and some compactness); having to get things through the pressure hull is such a pain you will pay high upfront costs to not do it. A reactor designed to push a large cargo vessel around doesn’t have those constraints and could be designed for easy refueling. (There are some marine thermal siphon designs with very few moving parts, come to that.)

            High latitude hydro has “and it froze” issues, same after anything else outside up there.

            • fullsquare@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              edit-2
              11 hours ago

              either sub or aircraft carrier reactors might be somewhere around 50 to 220MWe, panamax might need 60MWe tops, regular land based PWRs are more like 300MWe and up. the smaller you go, the higher enrichment you need, but also military propulsion has different priorities, they use 90%+ enrichment in part because they can, and in part because this gives them massive excess reactivity, which means power level can change ridiculously fast. tradeoff is that spent fuel has much more useful uranium, and it’s overall expensive, but you also don’t skimp on your doomsday ride so it’s all fine. commercial powerplants are physically capable of doing slower load following, but it’s more economical most of the time to just use full power in order to best utilize fissile material. what you’re proposing would have all disadvantages of both, because no way in hell this thing will run on standard, low enriched fuel for PWRs, it might need something maybe more than 5%, maybe closer to 10%, perhaps more, which means problems, because it means worse proliferation risks than with normal fuel and it’s already fuel that goes around, and can be taken over in some unfriendly waters; higher enrichment also means it’ll be much more expensive, both because of more SWU needed, but also because it’s a specialty product that requires extra licensing; and it also won’t be as compact and responsive as military reactor, because civilians don’t get to play with HEU like that; and also it will require refueling after some time, maybe longer than regular-sized PWR (refueling every year to three) that probably will require visit to manufacturer to do refueling there, which would be, everything else equal, a bit harder than in regular powerplant because it needs to be done in a drydock

              it has all disadvantages of SMRs but also you can steal them on high seas and it’s probably great for diplomacy if some random ass pirate get hands on that

              • blakestacey@awful.systems
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                10 hours ago

                but also military propulsion has different priorities

                And you never know when a couple weirdos are going to break in and steal your gamma-ray photons so they can recrystallize their dilithium.

        • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          19 hours ago

          Medical isotopes don’t necessarily need to be created in power reactors.

          High-latitudes is a very limited application. Very few people live in areas where solar isn’t viable. They also tend to have a lot of space for wind power and some potential geothermal. Long distance HVDC lines shouldn’t be discounted, either.

          Marine power is where I hope SMRs actually work out.

            • fullsquare@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              15 hours ago

              iirc us navy loads their reactors with 93% enriched uranium, the same grade that is used in (american) nukes (and also in couple of very special use cases like oak ridge high flux reactor fuel). can’t hand this out just like that. one fuel load is expected to last entire ship lifetime. the less enriched grade you use, the bigger reactor becomes and refueling has to be more frequent

              • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                14 hours ago

                Trump was ready to give some Sam Altman project highly enriched uranium, though I’m not clear on whether that was 20% (already considered a serious proliferation risk) or full bomb-grade 95%.

                • fullsquare@awful.systems
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  13 hours ago

                  uranium or plutonium, because i’ve heard of some plutonium that was slated to be disposed of this way 20 years ago and just sat there unused (not that saltman has facilities or people to do anything with it)

                  • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    ·
                    12 hours ago

                    plutonium, looks like:

                    US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium - Oct 21st https://www.ft.com/content/2fbbc621-405e-4a29-850c-f0079b116216 https://archive.is/Pc949

                    The Department of Energy on Tuesday published an application that nuclear energy groups can use to seek up to 19 metric tonnes of the government’s weapons-grade plutonium from cold war-era warheads.

                    At least two companies, Oklo, which is backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and France’s Newcleo, are expected to apply to access the government’s plutonium stockpile.

                    may I just say:

                    JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

                    However, experts have raised concerns about the commercial use of plutonium and the risk of the material falling into the wrong hands.

                    NO SHIT

            • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              18 hours ago

              The conclusion of the NS Savannah was that it would have been economical after the oil crisis of the 1970s caused a price spike in fuel costs. Ports also need facilities and training to handle nuclear fuel. Once you have that, it’s perfectly viable.

              Unlike energy generation on land, there isn’t a lot of alternatives for decarbonizing marine transport.

              • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                14 hours ago

                I’m sure there will be no issues setting up nuclear fuel handling at ports worldwide. Well, maybe one or two.

      • David Gerard@awful.systemsOPM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        20 hours ago

        yeah, even the green case for nuclear - which has been around for a long time - falters on wind and solar with battery just being hilariously cheaper. At this point the funding problem is interconnects.

        • Cadbury Moose@wandering.shop
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          19 hours ago

          @dgerard @frezik

          The problem is alway interconnects.

          (There aren’t that many of them, and they tend to be scaled for fossil-fuelled power stations, probably 1MW being the smallest unless there were CHP setups with a grid feed.)