Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#251

Post by cycomanic » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:00 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #131

Gwypaas wrote: post #118

After 70 years of trying we haven't built an economic traditional nuclear reactor. Even less a breeder. It is like saying we have infinite fossil fuels because we can use renewables to create it from water and air. The interesting part of the conversation is the efficient allocation of money and people. In that conversation nuclear power never materialized.

The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess. The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant. Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding pro…

Except for the fact that french nuclear power is highly subsidized (partly by military budgets, partly other subsidies, partly by grossly underfunding for storage and decommissioning costs, which they are required to put funds aside for), is breaking at the seams last year for some time >80% of the power generation was down in France due to maintenance (picked up by "intermittent solar and wind").

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#252

Post by fsflover » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:04 PM UTC

pyrale wrote: post #175

throwaway1777 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you forget about externalities and politics? Because nuclear would be way cheaper with practice building reactors, economies of scale, without billions in red tape, etc. not to mention it’s the best source of base load without creating massive amounts of air pollution or battery waste

> without billions in red tape I would prefer to keep the red tape, thank you very much. Sure, nuclear is an expensive industry, but it's also a very safe industry, and I believe we should keep this part of it.

The parent didn't say "without reasonable safety measures". See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-risk_bias

and

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36751041

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#253

Post by Zealotux » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:05 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #251

hedora wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess. The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant. Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding pro…

Except for the fact that french nuclear power is highly subsidized (partly by military budgets, partly other subsidies, partly by grossly underfunding for storage and decommissioning costs, which they are required to put funds aside for), is breaking at the seams last year for some time >80% of the power generation was down in France due to maintenance (picked up by "intermittent solar and wind").

Every time the fact nuclear power is subsidized is being brought up, I can't help but think of how much energy, in general, is highly subsidized, like other fossils and renewables. What makes it special in the case of nuclear?

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#254

Post by ttfkam » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

urinotherapist wrote: post #222

ttfkam wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well do solar and wind infrastructures handle tornados and hurricanes? Also, consistent wind resources are notably absent in the South/Southeast. There are no Hoover Dam-like sites available there. Do you honestly expect to tell tens of millions of people that they should just be content with a single hurricane knocking out their electricity grid for a month? That's not realistic. You cannot plan an electrical fu…

> At the very least, we should be aggressively working toward fast neutron reactors so that we don't have spent fuel that will remain dangerously radioactive for 100,000+ years. We can "burn" that "waste" and supply the entire current need for US electrical production for the next 150 years without mining a single new kilogram of uranium So, you propose to increase number of regulations and total cost of the nuclear…

I propose to solve the waste problem in the most constructive way I am aware of.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#255

Post by fsflover » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

antonvs wrote: post #158

hedora wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess. The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design instead of re-inventing the entire thing from scratch for each plant. Imagine how much more accessible computers would be if you could just copy the operating system from one "printed" circuit board to another, instead of hand-wiring all the transistors, then hand coding pro…

According to https://www.ad.nl/economie/duur-en-gevaarlijk-elke-kerncentr... (translated with Google): > "The leading German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin investigated whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy. The answer is negative: all 674 nuclear power plants that were built worldwide between 1951 and 2017 were built with substantial government subsidies. With…

> whether new nuclear power plants can indeed contribute to a clean(er) economy

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#256

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #128

throwaway1777 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you forget about externalities and politics? Because nuclear would be way cheaper with practice building reactors, economies of scale, without billions in red tape, etc. not to mention it’s the best source of base load without creating massive amounts of air pollution or battery waste

Sadly we don't get to ignore politics inconveniently making fission more expensive. If you do ignore politics and just look at costs alone, then we can make a global HVDC power grid for less than the cost of the other local upgrades we want regardless within each national power grid. People demand a safety standard from fission which is expensive, and keep demanding ever more safety from them, and when it can't do th…

The reason people demand higher standards is history.

An example: stacks that scrub radioisotopes out of steam from confinement during serious accidents when the steam has to be released to prevent overpressurization of the confinement system. These were added to most European reactors after Chernobyl. The US and Japanese didn't add these, saying the cost wasn't worth it.

Then Fukushima happened. Had the reactors there had these systems, the radioactive release would have been reduced by a factor of 100.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#257

Post by pyrale » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

throwaway5959 wrote: post #240

pyrale wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess. As a french Engineer, I can confirm this. For work inquiries, please reach me at pyrale@oversized.ego > The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design In fact, we don't keep building them. The last N4 reactor was delivered in 2003. Since then, aside from the failed joint-venture with Germany that is the EPR, France ess…

Why does it seem we can’t build complicated things like we used to? The same seems to be true here in the US as well.

The French and the US reasons are, from what I understand, quite different. I don't know the US situation that well.

In France, many factors were involved:

* France over-producing power for decades around y2k, which meant it was hard to commit the country to build more nuclear reactors.

* The EPR being an over-engineered fiasco due to it being designed in a Franco-German partnership which quickly folded, but the design was kept.

* The privatization of the energy sector involved a lot of restructuring for EDF, and the creation of Areva. This had a lot of involvement, but the main one is that the state took a hands-off stance, and EDF and Areva started competing with each other rather than collaborating.

* Areva got mismanaged quite heavily. People like to point out the Olkiluoto fiasco, but what really killed the company was the Uramin scandal.

* Politicians since 2007 started asking hefty dividends from public companies, involving EDF, in order to prop up the government's budget. That created an investment deficit, and significant debt for EDF.

So yeah, lots of things, but the underlying issue seems to be that France used to have a culture of the state coordinating huge projects, which was lost with the new generation of politicians. There seems to be an appetite for new reactors, but the industry is significantly harmed by 20 years of political mixed signals, and whether the current politicians and the industry can deliver remains unclear.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#258

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

epaulson wrote: post #165

Yes, we could get a lot more energy out of our fission fuel. The reason the USA doesn't is because Jimmy Carter set a policy of not reprocessing fuel because he felt it encouraged nuclear weapons proliferation, coming just a few years after India exploded its first device. Carter's statement: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML120960615.pdf

This is a common nuke bro story, but it's nonsense. The actual reason is that plutonium has negative value. It costs more to incorporate it in new fuel rods than it would cost to make fuel rods with freshly enriched uranium.

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#259

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:16 PM UTC

fnordpiglet wrote: post #134

jillesvangurp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well according to the two graphgs for 2018 and 2019, nuclear declined a bit in the US. Not surprising because there were some plant closures and not a whole lot of plant openings. And nothing is on track to be added any time soon. Maybe one or two plants. New nuclear is a bit like an oil tanker (pun intended, sorry): just very slow to ramp up new capacity. This boom you are talking about is so far not adding up to a…

The pressure on the NRC to lighten up a bit is immense. I suspect we might see some significant acceleration, especially with the various electrification drives, coupled with the multitude of safe nuclear designs, and a general sense that “why is this so broken?” permeating everywhere that cares.

Congress is free to change the law that NRC must operate under. Until that happens, the NRC cannot "lighten up" (if they did so in violation of law, they'd be taken to court.)

Re: Nuclear fission fuel is inexhaustible (2022)

#260

Post by joecool1029 » Sun, Jul 16, 2023, 10:19 PM UTC

danhor wrote: post #224

joecool1029 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's literally cheaper for oil refineries to be using wind and solar than it is for them to burn their own product. Until it's winter, the ground is frozen, and they have no reserves to burn. Then there's a panic to get the same nonrenewables they would normally flare off when the weather is sunny and breezy. > That's why Texas has so much renewable power. It has tons of underdeveloped land in a region with good wi…

Wasn't the issue with Texas that renewables were behaving as expected (unfortunately not producing a lot of electricity), but fossil fuel power sources were failing unexpectedly due to the freezes? Thus the issue not being renwables. I'm also surprised at the mention of a coal renaissance in germany. While coal isn't reduced as much as it should, all the data I found pointed to a continual downwards trend over the la…

> Thus the issue not being renwables.

I never said renewables were a problem in Texas, I said the general energy policy is stupid.

>While coal isn't reduced as much as it should, all the data I found pointed to a continual downwards trend over the last years.

Until Ukraine war banned them buying coal and gas from Russia, now they need to produce it domestically. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-energy-u-turn-coal-instead-of... and https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/energy-crisis-fu...