When a read the title i thought that maybe they were going to put tiny nuclear reactors in everyone's home.
Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
41–50 of 353 posts
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#42>Environmentalists are divided over nuclear power, with some maintaining it is dangerous and expensive, while others say that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 all technologies are needed. Yes, a mix of technologies. But there's more to it than that. We're going to need increasing amounts of power in the future to explore the solar system and to solve all kinds of existential problems. Energy usage is not inheren…
baby steps I'd say. Let's first fix all the mess we are making here on earth before thinking of space exploration.
There will always be some mess on Earth and anywhere else human kind visits in the future. We are flawed. Let's dream about perfect, but settle for good enough.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that every mistake propagated over 10 reactors has to be fixed 10 times. If you have a single reactor, you just fix it once.
That's a massive benefit. That means there 10 opportunities to optimize the process.
I like your glass-half full way of thinking, and of course you are completely correct.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#44an aside: why d nuclear reactors have to be built on the coast? does that not make them more vulnerable to natural disasters
They rely on water for cooling so are built near a source of it, be it the sea or a river.
Rivers tend to have different flow rates over the course of the year. If there is a heat wave the plant may not have enough water for cooling. The ocean is more dependable.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#45We shouldn't be using nuclear energy for power. Solar, wind and batteries will solve that. What we should be doing is using nuclear energy for HEAT. We need a LOT of heat for a variety of chemical and industrial processes, not to mention heating of homes in colder climates. For these uses nuclear fission has massive potential.
Baseline power based on batteries is not practical yet and it won't be for a while. Way too expensive and resource intensive.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I remember Toshiba having a decay-based laptop battery in development (at least 10 years ago, maybe 20). You wouldn't have to charge, ever. Now that would be something!
When I was five or so, I had a watch with a radium dial. I read in a kid's science book that if you went to bed and waited until your eyes were adjusted to the dark, and then held the watch dial against your closed eyelid, you would be able to see the sparks as individual radium atoms decayed. I did this, and it worked! I could see each spark!
Radium is primarily an alpha emitter. Alpha won't cross through the glass of the watch face, or even your skin. Maybe you were seeing the much more rare beta decays.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#47"Production line mistakes may lead to generic defects that propagate throughout an entire fleet of reactors and are costly to fix," (person from University College London) warned. Wouldn’t the knowledge gained by fixing a large one-off reactor be of limited transferable value, as compared to expensive knowledge that could be used to upgrade an existing “fleet” plus improve subsequent versions?
Having to fix it at all is a serious problem. France is currently dealing with reactor fleet problems: https://www.powermag.com/frances-nuclear-storm-many-power-pl... ("carbon segregation"), https://www.energy-reporters.com/industry/edf-admits-to-reac... ("welding issues").
In both cases they took a long time to come to light and the country is now stuck dealing with them across a large fraction of its power production.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree completely. It's a fallacy to believe we will require less energy in the long run. We need much more, if we want to advance as a species.
Yep, and nuclear is the only near-infinite source of energy.
I'm always baffled by such statements.
Can you explain in which way solar is not a "near-infinite source of energy"? I mean... there are without doubt technical challenges and all that (but arguably less technical challenges than to do the same with nuclear), but there really is no relevant limit to the deployment of solar cells if you include things like large-scale installations in the desert.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree completely. It's a fallacy to believe we will require less energy in the long run. We need much more, if we want to advance as a species.
Yep, and nuclear is the only near-infinite source of energy.
But that hopefully would be nuclear fusion not fission.
Fission however (a) is politically unpopular and (b) has a waste problem that no country wants to own.
Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree completely. It's a fallacy to believe we will require less energy in the long run. We need much more, if we want to advance as a species.
Yep, and nuclear is the only near-infinite source of energy.
Forgive me if this is a worn trope, but I've read somewhere that the upper bound on what we can do with nuclear energy is not how much we can produce, but what we can do with the leftovers ... as more and more people use nuclear power we're going to produce more and more nuclear waste, and there isn't really any answer as to what we can do with that. There are plenty of fantastic "ideas" as to what can be done, but it doesn't seem to me that we've fully solved that side of the equation, and I'd be thinking we really should have a good bit more work done before we consider something with such dangerous side effects "a solution".