91–100 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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Unless we get serious about exploring the outer planets, then fusion will be a must have.
But not Tokamak fusion. That is a dead end. ITER steals the funding that might otherwise have got aneutronic FRC fusion working by now.
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The fact fission is classified as green /might/ impact fusion's future classification, but who knows. I was listening to a podcast and a disillusioned engineer said "environmentalists favorite nuclear power plant is always one that doesn't exist, as soon as it's ready to be built it's ready to be protested". Probably an instance of many groups under one label acting disparately, but I get the sentiment :/
Nuclear reactors are just bigger pains than even the coal plants they might replace. Especially to replace enough fossil fuel one would have to scale up the problems with mining, waste disposal, and risks of accidents or malicious interference. I know this isn't a popular idea here, but there also lots of physicists who don't believe in nuclear fission as a mid-term or near-long-term solution.
Doing anything at scale is difficult.
Always a treat to read something by Charles Stross. Seems like Accelerando was required reading for the previous generation, is it still? I was not familiar with the UK advanced gas cooled reactors, which use CO2 to cool the core and transfer heat to the steam. From the name it seems to be gas and not supercritical CO2 although I may have that wrong. Power generation is the one topic that makes thermodynamics crystal…
Accelerando is my all-time-favorite Sci Fi book. I read it twice now and will again in the near future. I'm 36 year old. I hope more people read this book.
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I read "The Fountainhead" at age 18 and was marvelled by it. I even quoted bits of Howard Roark's speeches on second-handers. I re-read it at age 25 and, uh, it's a really bad novel built around a couple of awesome "yas queen" kind of put-down rants. I feel the same about Accelerando. At one point I was in a clubbing phase and always took my paperback in my jacket pockets. Then, I never fully read it a second time be…
Accelerando is geek bait. His best work is the Laundry series which he's still working on. Disclaimer: no idea what his opinion of his work is.
One thing I've always wondered is, who cleans this things? Is normal, run of the mill cleaning personnel expected to be careful enough to not accidentally toss something out alignment, or is there some kind of Nuclear Plant Grade Cleaning industry I never heard about?
> in addition to the grid connection, there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems working.
Unfortunately for Fukushima, all generators were flooded by a single Tsunami. What are the odds of an unknown event that will affect all generators? Think of EMP, contaminated fuel, a large cloud of C)2 suffocating the engines... All seem highly unlikely, but how do you plan for the unknown unknowns?
The most likely (and I think underestimated) risk for Nuclear plants is a systemic change due to a large (climate?) crisis and/or war. Think of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that definitely increased risk and reduced maintenance budget for a few Nuclear plants. Any significant sea level rise, drought or flood could very well trigger such events (even if the reactor is not affected directly, the society around it will be). That is why I think nuclear is a risky option to reach net-zero; every plant you build is a bet on the future stability of society for at least 75 years (time until the plant will be safely decommissioned by future generations). I would feel much safer in a world covered in solar panels, wind turbines and transmission lines (and highly variable spot pricing) than in one with nuclear plants that require constant care by experts and that even in the best case incur a huge cost on society to safely decommission.
> In 2016 the European Commission assessed that European Union's nuclear decommissioning liabilities were seriously underfunded by about 118 billion euros, with only 150 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 268 billion euros of expected decommissioning costs covering both dismantling of nuclear plants and storage of radioactive parts and waste. France had the largest shortfall with only 23 billion euros of earmarked assets to cover 74 billion euros of expected costs [1]
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
That's 28 years away. People not yet born will be trained nuclear engineers by then. On what basis does RTE regard the loss of knowledge as already locked-in?
It's not only the loss of knowledge, it's also the higher security standards. The last reactor being built, Flamanville 3, was supposed to be ready by 2012, is still being built and not estimated ready before the end of 2022.
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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…
Neutron fission was discovered in 1938, ten years later we'd flattened two cities with it, and ten years after that we had working, profitable power stations. Theory to useful first-order application to useful second-order application in two decades.
Meanwhile, ITER started planning in the late 80s, began construction in 2007, and won't be fully operational until 2035, assuming no delays (hah). Even then, it won't do anything directly useful. That'll be figured out by grad students who haven't even been born yet, possibly.
This just isn't how healthy scientific and technological research looks like. If nobody expects anything of actual tangible value for 20 years, and there are billions of dollars of funding being thrown around, obviously you're going to get people riding the gravy train instead of getting real jobs. ITER is welfare for physicists.
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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…