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Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

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Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#41

Post by mohamedkoubaa »

rayiner wrote: post #32
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #9

I am still quite confused on the scientific consensus: Should we double down on renewable energy and solve its issues with lots of batteries or should we invest in next generation nuclear energy? Both at the same time? Does anyone know?

That's a political and economic question, not a scientific one. Science can provide input information, but the decision involves weighing all sorts of facts and considerations outside the scope of science.

Exactly. Waiting for a scientific consensus on a question that is very clearly not posed as a scientific question is oddly cultish

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#42

Post by pfdietz »

api wrote: post #38

Is anyone working in the US on a waste solution that isn’t a big hole with a straight out of cyberpunk sci-fi warning plaque? The French reprocess and recycle fissile material but that’s kind of a gnarly industrial process. Still they do it and it works. The long term solution is to create a second kind of reactor that has a higher burn fraction which means a more fuel efficient fast reactor. Those would be, ideally,…

IMO, the long term solution will be to simply launch the waste into space. With low enough launch costs the extra mass needed to armor the waste against accidents becomes tolerable.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#43

Post by fssys »

pfdietz wrote: post #26
bevekspldnw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to avoiding the worst impacts of the current catastrophic path we’re on, “nothing will work, but everything might”. Do it all.

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

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#44

Post by pfdietz »

krunck wrote: post #28
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #9

I am still quite confused on the scientific consensus: Should we double down on renewable energy and solve its issues with lots of batteries or should we invest in next generation nuclear energy? Both at the same time? Does anyone know?

next generation nuclear energy = fusion

Fusion's main accomplishment will likely be to make fission look cheap in comparison, due to fundamental issues of power density in the nuclear island. Why make a huge complex low power density radioactive thing when you can make a much smaller simpler high power density radioactive thing?

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#45

Post by quirkot »

api wrote: post #38

Is anyone working in the US on a waste solution that isn’t a big hole with a straight out of cyberpunk sci-fi warning plaque? The French reprocess and recycle fissile material but that’s kind of a gnarly industrial process. Still they do it and it works. The long term solution is to create a second kind of reactor that has a higher burn fraction which means a more fuel efficient fast reactor. Those would be, ideally,…

Europe has about 60,000 tons of nuclear waste storage[1], so lets say the global nuclear waste quantity is 2-3x or 120,000 to 180,000 tons. That sounds like a lot, however it's less than 2 weeks of coal deliveries to a coal plant (at 1 train of 115 cars each with 116 tons of coal = 13,340 tons delivered per day[2]). To take another approach, the average landfill size is 600 acres[3].

The "eh, just bury it" approach is really not a bad one. Its not even that much stuff to bury

[1] https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/

[2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=16651

[3] https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2021/04/15/hidden-damage-la...

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#46

Post by rs_rs_rs_rs_rs »

pfdietz wrote: post #25
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #9

I am still quite confused on the scientific consensus: Should we double down on renewable energy and solve its issues with lots of batteries or should we invest in next generation nuclear energy? Both at the same time? Does anyone know?

Nuclear partisans like to call renewables ideological, but I think this is another example of "the accusation is a confession". The empirical evidence has nuclear being uncompetitively expensive. The current focus on variant reactor designs appears to be something of a Hail Mary attempt to get around this sad state of affairs. You sometimes see them making an argument about energy density, which goes back to Vaclav S…

>The empirical evidence has nuclear being uncompetitively expensive

I have a solution, take the subsidies spent on "renewables" and put them into nuclear! Easy peasy!

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#47

Post by atwrk »

api wrote: post #36
Tade0 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China does: all of the above, where it makes sense. Renewables and batteries to keep your AC, workplace EV charger, stove, pool heater and (since recently) green ammonia producer going, nuclear to prevent e.g. aluminium smelters from seizing up. Also the cheapest way to make renewables work 24/7 is to build HVDC lines - they cost as much as a highway per unit length and even undersea cables would deploy for less and…

China is also still building coal and has passed Europe and will (if they don’t change course) soon pass the US and Canada and the other big ones on a per capita emitter basis. They already passed everyone as top emitter in an absolute sense. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita Not saying they’re not also building renewables and nuclear, but it seems like the policy is more “build anything and…

Coal is already shrinking in the China (in absolute terms, not just as share of production) [1], and share of wind + solar is already larger than in the US [2], so I doubt China will ever reach US proportions in CO2 emissions per capita.

An additional data point to support that is that emissions intensity per GDP is clearly falling fast for China [3].

[1] https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...

[2] https://ember-energy.org/data/electricity-data-explorer/?ent...

[3] Chart 75 from here: https://robbieandrew.github.io/GCB2025/

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#48

Post by yabones »

api wrote: post #38

Is anyone working in the US on a waste solution that isn’t a big hole with a straight out of cyberpunk sci-fi warning plaque? The French reprocess and recycle fissile material but that’s kind of a gnarly industrial process. Still they do it and it works. The long term solution is to create a second kind of reactor that has a higher burn fraction which means a more fuel efficient fast reactor. Those would be, ideally,…

I don't see the issue with dry cask storage medium term, and deep geological storage long term. Spent fuel isn't really that dangerous once it's been cooled down and for a couple decades before putting it in the ground, to the point that there are far more dangerous natural things you can dig up.

What concerns me is that 250 years of fossil fuel energy continues to store its waste products in my lungs and the water I drink. That's the issue we need to solve with urgency.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#49

Post by jampekka »

pfdietz wrote: post #42
api wrote: post #38

Is anyone working in the US on a waste solution that isn’t a big hole with a straight out of cyberpunk sci-fi warning plaque? The French reprocess and recycle fissile material but that’s kind of a gnarly industrial process. Still they do it and it works. The long term solution is to create a second kind of reactor that has a higher burn fraction which means a more fuel efficient fast reactor. Those would be, ideally,…

IMO, the long term solution will be to simply launch the waste into space. With low enough launch costs the extra mass needed to armor the waste against accidents becomes tolerable.

Can't wait for one of those launch rockets to explode in the atmosphere!
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