Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029 • Hacker News Board

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#171

Post by Brometheus » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:47 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #103

neuronic wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is fusion and not fission [1]. If you can't even get that right, why should anyone take these weird pro-fission arguments seriously in 2020? The solution is to keep using existing nuclear power and develop renewables for replacement. Nuclear fission plants take at the very least 10 years (!!) to go online from the day construction begins. And that leaves out years of planning and dealing with contracts. It's to…

Renewables are not a replacement for existing nuclear power unless you either add fossil fuels or batteries to the mix. Countries which currently are replacing nuclear power do so with a combination of renewables and fossil fuels, with fossil fuels burning when renewables are not producing. Batteries, usually reverse hydro power, is an interesting future technology. Some argue it is significant more developed than fu…

For nuclear you still need to have peaker plants. ALso nuclear is really expensive.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#172

Post by Already__Taken » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

rusk wrote: post #74

roenxi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If literally all the electricity ever produced by the human waste had been produced by current generation nuclear technologies, there would be a small hill of high-level nuclear waste somewhere. It wouldn't be an issue except locally where it was stored. To believe that is a problem is to not have grappled with just how big the world is and how much of it is uninhabitable to humans already. The human population is co…

Yeah man, I dunno either ... I think "poisonous" is understating it somewhat. We're talking about substances that will remain toxic for thousands of years, and are quite happy to go everywhere they can if there is some issue with containment. I appreciate that you have a conviction that this is a problem, but you're coming across a bit hand-wavy in your arguments. I'd prefer to see concrete solutions (and I don't mea…

> and are quite happy to go everywhere they can if there is some issue with containment.

It's turned into glass as far as I know (which isn't much). It's not like some ooze to leak out.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#173

Post by natmaka » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #16

ainiriand wrote: post #4

That sounds like a very bad idea. Although I am confident that the tech has evolved since Chernobyl, terrorism has evolved as well. It just takes a bunch of assholes to destroy a small town. And yes, I think they will be pretty well guarded. But if you have lots of them some of them will have security flaws.

> terrorism has evolved as well I stopped worrying about terrorism when I realized that they could easily take out most of the European power grid with a few well-placed bombs on the central very-high-voltage power lines. Yet for some reason, they don't. If terrorists were really hellbent on killing as many enemy civilians as possible, the world would look very different. What actually seems to be happening is that t…

This is true for some terrorists, not for any of them. The War Nerd explained it.

https://exiledonline.com/the-war-se-the-better/

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#174

Post by jwm20 » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

AtlasLion wrote: post #26

grabbalacious wrote: post #15

>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.

The microscope story a sibling comment mentioned is part of a 1970 letter from a then-NASA Director to a nun serving in Africa who asked the same question. I believe the full text is worth a read: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#175

Post by belorn » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

cygx wrote: post #142

belorn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are not a replacement for existing nuclear power unless you either add fossil fuels or batteries to the mix. Countries which currently are replacing nuclear power do so with a combination of renewables and fossil fuels, with fossil fuels burning when renewables are not producing. Batteries, usually reverse hydro power, is an interesting future technology. Some argue it is significant more developed than fu…

Countries which currently are replacing nuclear power do so with a combination of renewables and fossil fuels Which countries? Germany for example isn't - yet. We're still in a place where we can reduce usage of both fossil fuels and nuclear, though that won't last unless we figure out effective means of energy storage.

As an example, Sweden. People will use fossil fueled energy when the choice is between people freezing in their home or burning fossil fuels. Sweden rely on a mix between hydro and nuclear, but it is not feasible to extend hydro beyond current capacity. The nuclear plants however is getting older, and politically people want to shut them down. Something has to produce the energy, and during the winter it is imported fossil fuels energy when the wind is not blowing.

Germany as an example illustrate the issue quite nice, as can be seen live at electricitymap.org. When the wind is blowing the country goes green with around 70% of energy being produced by wind. Very sunny days you get around 20% solar. Days like today that is a bit rainy and not very windy, and you have 60% fossil fuels. The constant is nuclear around 10%, so remove that and the above numbers will go up depending on weather conditions.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#176

Post by Brometheus » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

Beltiras wrote: post #138

Koshkin wrote: post #136

The natural reserve of radioactive material, like that of fossil fuel, is finite. We cannot count on it in the long run. On the other hand, we are awash with the huge amounts of the free solar energy. We just need better batteries, which is a purely technical problem.

If we moved to Thorium the supply is virtually endless.

Of which we have not a single working reactor. Just saying. We in Germany spend a lot of money on it and did not get it to work.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#177

Post by wazoox » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #133

What's missing is a $/kwh quote. It's important because renewables are the cheapest option on the market right now and nowhere near done dropping further in price. If the last ten years are any indication, an order of magnitude further drop in prices before the end of the decade is not unreasonable considering mass production of batteries, solar, and wind is still ramping up and considering the enormous amount of R&D…

No, renewable are incredibly expensive, on the contrary. Why is that? Because renewable produce when wind blows or sun shines, and not when we need power. That's the first point, we need to produce exactly as much energy as we consume, at any time. Renewables fail utterly at that, and that's why renewable energy appears so cheap when you simply consider the price at which it's sold on the markets: production occurs at random times when it isn't needed, pushing market prices down in the toilet. But that's an undesirable side-effect, and not a good thing.

Renewable produces only a fraction of their nominal output (typically 15-20%), and at random times. So typically a huge, sprawling 12km2 900MW solar plant produces a small amount of power during the year, in the best case (in the desert) 1.4TWh, while a 900MW nuclear reactor produces typically (actual numbers) 6.5TWh every year.

You also need to complement renewable production with an equivalent amount of steerable power (usually natural gas), or a large amount of batteries which multiplies the price by 5, 10 or more. So you can't consider the renewable price alone; you must take into account the price of the substitute power source, too... And its environmental price!

So renewable energy is cheap because it isn't worth much. It puts extra pressure on the grid, it forces nuclear plant to run at reduced capacity, which reduces the yield, and artificially lowers their profitability for no good reason at all.

In fact, renewables, by reducing profitability of nuclear power, has another very undesirable side-effect: making nuclear power companies cut corners on safety to save money.

Renewable power is better than coal; but it isn't, by large, as good as nuclear.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#178

Post by Beltiras » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

DrNuke wrote: post #170

Beltiras wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just a layman with enthusiastic interest. Can I ask you about one thing in this pipeline of decision making since you are in the field? Refueling is easier to do in MSRs and nigh takes away an embarrassing long downtime while the solid fuel is loaded. Why is that not a first concern (less downtime means more energy from roughly same capital expenditure)? Safety is critical. It also costs a lot. With MSRs you need…

Good to have interested laymen, really, so thanks! The fundamental point is (in my very humble opinion, mind) you may still have a business case for nuclear in 2020 but no feasible return on investment against non-nuclear sources for decades-long experiments that, all in all, are aimed at marginal improvements in the grand scheme of things and the enormous hassle proponents have to face. It is fusion or nothing, apar…

That's the thing. Thorium doesn't sound to me like an incremental change at all. It sounds like a gamechanger. There is no blast radius. At all. Criticality in that sense is not possible. There's improvement along every measurable criteria of operation. Some of those improvements are not small either. This is all contingent on me not being mistaken in my assumptions. I've only ever seen the argument from the advocates.

It sounds a little apocalyptic putting all of ones hopes on a technology that may or may not work at all. We have no guarantee that fusion will provide a return. It's the tech of choice because of wishful thinking. Gen 4 and liquid fuels are proven to work and eliminate a big slew of the disadvantages that made people fearful of NPPs. IMO if a part of the solution to CO2 is DAC then we will need massive energy generation to run the capture plants and we need them soon. No tech can deliver that in the next 10 years safely except Thorium.

There's nothing wrong with old tech in computer science. You can containerize Fortran batch programs with ease. All old things come back once in a while. Functional programming is now the rave and Common LiSP actually sees use.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#179

Post by kerkeslager » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:16 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #143

Beltiras wrote: post #137

I'm amazed that the industry is still propagating the mistake made in the early nuclear age of using PWR and solid fuel. The more I read about nuclear the more convinced I become that SMRs for next gen plants are safest and most efficient using the Thorium-U233 fuel cycle and employing molten salt to transfer heat. It's automatically safe since if a runaway reaction takes place the fuel will drain into a tank and rea…

Plumbing is a problem for hot radioactive molten salt. It's one of the few things that will erode ordinary stainless steel.

Does titanium hold up to radioactive molten salt?

There are a bunch of places I've found where the difficulty (and therefore cost) of working with titanium is really holding humanity back. If we could find cheaper techniques for working with titanium it would revolutionize a lot of industries, as it's plentiful, light, strong, non-reactive, and melts at high temperatures. But the same attributes that make it hold up under the stresses of use, make it very hard to shape.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#180

Post by DrNuke » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 3:20 PM UTC

Beltiras wrote: post #178

DrNuke wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to have interested laymen, really, so thanks! The fundamental point is (in my very humble opinion, mind) you may still have a business case for nuclear in 2020 but no feasible return on investment against non-nuclear sources for decades-long experiments that, all in all, are aimed at marginal improvements in the grand scheme of things and the enormous hassle proponents have to face. It is fusion or nothing, apar…

That's the thing. Thorium doesn't sound to me like an incremental change at all. It sounds like a gamechanger. There is no blast radius. At all. Criticality in that sense is not possible. There's improvement along every measurable criteria of operation. Some of those improvements are not small either. This is all contingent on me not being mistaken in my assumptions. I've only ever seen the argument from the advocate…

> There's nothing wrong with old tech in computer science. You can containerize Fortran batch programs with ease. All old things come back once in a while. Functional programming is now the rave and Common LiSP actually sees use.

You got it. May I second that as a nuclear eng for nuclear? Small & Modular is your container... and the novel, distributed grid at transnational level is your framework!?