81–90 of 269 posts
Helluva memory this guy has... Halfway down the article I could not stop thinking "how on Earth can he write all this from memory?" I'm sure those engineers have a story or two to tell too... Great read, thank you.
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That would contradict "even if she wanted to, France couldn't". If she wanted to, France could make nuclear engineering a highly-paid profession with strong job security. It would just cost more money.
It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. Voters are allowed to change their minds, and the risk that they do that and completely destroy nuclear engineering as a career option is always present. Something like software engineering is a much safer career option, because the risk that your country will categorically ban it is pretty low. And because it doesn't tie you to a small number of poss…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendorf_Nuclear_Power_Plan...
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Even if you didn't have loss of knowledge or increased security measures, unless future French nuclear power can lower its costs, it will inevitably have a lower share in the French energy mix.
The CO2 cost is low though. You don’t need to fire coal and gas power plants when it’s dark and not windy.
How is a site comprised nearly of just text so overloaded by HN? It's a total 110KB.
> Just to point out that Stross's blog is running off an elderly PC in his office, so no surprise that when it makes the front page on HN (twice in two days now) it gets slashdotted.
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That would contradict "even if she wanted to, France couldn't". If she wanted to, France could make nuclear engineering a highly-paid profession with strong job security. It would just cost more money.
It's impossible to make binding long-term promises in a democracy. Voters are allowed to change their minds, and the risk that they do that and completely destroy nuclear engineering as a career option is always present. Something like software engineering is a much safer career option, because the risk that your country will categorically ban it is pretty low. And because it doesn't tie you to a small number of poss…
What's the percentage split for civilian vs military employment for nuclear industry jobs?
French power grid agency RTE made a report[0] forecasting 2050 France energy mix, and because of loss of knowledge and increased security measures, even with strong political will, France won't be able to maintain its 70% nuclear power electricity share. Most nuclear-intensive scenario in this report is max 50% nuclear energy. [0] https://assets.rte-france.com/prod/public/2021-12/Futurs-Ene... in french
Then you read something like this and realize Asimov had a point!
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ITER will generate no power. No liquid-metal neutron-absorber "blanket", no steam piping, no turbines. DEMO / PROTO will, if not cancelled, be absolutely monstrous, but generate no more power than a wee fission plant. Until they destroy themselves with their own neutron flux. (They should build them underground, so they will already be buried when it is time to abandon them.) It is inconceivable that any such project…
Unless we get serious about exploring the outer planets, then fusion will be a must have.
ITER steals the funding that might otherwise have got aneutronic FRC fusion working by now.
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ITER will generate no power. No liquid-metal neutron-absorber "blanket", no steam piping, no turbines. DEMO / PROTO will, if not cancelled, be absolutely monstrous, but generate no more power than a wee fission plant. Until they destroy themselves with their own neutron flux. (They should build them underground, so they will already be buried when it is time to abandon them.) It is inconceivable that any such project…
> It is inconceivable that any such project will ever produce enough value to pay for the absurd level of capital investment and operational costs just to make them operate at all In and of itself that may be correct, but they could provide valuable stepping stones to future systems that are much cheaper, simpler, and more efficient, which could not exist without first creating these large expensive projects. The val…
Took him a few hours to get out.
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The CO2 cost is low though. You don’t need to fire coal and gas power plants when it’s dark and not windy.
The long term vision is for those gas plants to be hydrogen-powered, with the hydrogen generated by the surplus of wind and solar during peak times. Pumped hydro for power storage is also something that will become viable. You lose a lot in conversion, but excess wind power is very cheap.
IMO, the reality is that these plants will never convert to anything other than natural gas and will eventually be shut down, still running on natural gas.
Hydrogen is not a fuel, it's an energy storage mechanism, and not a very good one at that. If you're going to store energy there's much more efficient and/or cheaper ways of doing it.
Natural gas is still a good fuel but I don't think anyone in the US at least is under any illusion that these will ever run on anything other than natural gas.