Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 11:21 AM UTC

Recurecur wrote: post #119

pfdietz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bad idea. Subduction zones move very slowly, and material would come back up in "mud volcanoes", especially with the added heat input of the waste.

Nonsense. The sea floor in those areas is soft muck, 20,000 ft or more deep. The waste, likely packaged in torpedo shaped structures made of corrosion proof, high density, high strength materials, would arrive at somewhere around 150 MPH. Being extremely dense and heavy, they would penetrate deeply into the sea bottom, estimated at 35-55 meters deep. There’s no chance they’d somehow be forced back to the surface. Eve…

If you're going to put it 20,000 feet deep in the sea floor, do it somewhere far away from subduction zones.

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Jul 12, 2026, 11:25 AM UTC

fssys wrote: post #43

pfdietz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is not on a trajectory to do more than supply a minor amount of world energy. A (say) 10% nuclear, 90% renewable world is not an easier challenge than a 100% renewable world -- the intermittency/seasonality issues aren't eased by having 10% nuclear running as baseload, and keeping it as backup makes its cost per kWh explode. Nuclear really has to go big (supply most of the world's energy) or go home. But supp…

nuclear takes longer to come online though vs renewables can be very quick, so it makes sense to do both as a short-long term strategy

As the renewables quickly come online, they push down their experience curves and get cheaper, and the residual demand is increasingly intermittent. Both these considerations mean the economic environment will get worse for nuclear over time. I think this is why there's a rather frantic online push for nuclear: it's now or never for the nuclear bros.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor