Sure they do:
The Boy Who Played With Fusion
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-who-played...
Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
41–50 of 107 posts
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is very disappointing how constricted the field of nuclear research is, as it is a demonstrably zero carbon footprint energy source. Yes, if only it didn't have any other footprint...
Is this a real world problem with real world consequences? It is my understanding that the nuclear waste can be stored safely without too much cost. It is also my understanding that there are ways to re-use the already used fuel rods, effectively 1) making them radiate less 2) getting "leftover" power from already consumed fuel. Psychological footprint fueled by ignorance however... Well, that borders religiousness.…
It can be stored safely, but so far a good waste solution hasn't been implemented, at least in the US. With the cancellation of Yucca Mountain, the current "interim" long-term storage plan is basically on-site dry cask storage scattered everywhere. The spent-fuel pools are an even bigger mess. Many of them are filling up, and fuel isn't being transferred from them to longer-term storage even when it could/should be, because operators want to reduce costs.
I don't think many experts are that happy with the current spent-fuel story. They vary in why they're unhappy, ranging from environmental worries (more common on the left) to theft/terrorism worries (more common on the right). But overall there is just way too much nuclear waste hanging out in suboptimal interim storage.
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
We do precision tests of gravity and searches for forces weaker than gravity. (Front page is dated, see publications tab for more recent work) http://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwash/ The most-important experiment we do is to test the Equivalence Principle [1], the idea that if you drop two things in vacuum, they'll fall at the same rate regardless of what they're made from. Results from our lab have shown that, at 1 p…
Pardon my complete lack of knowledge in this field, but would MEMS (or NEMS) mirror arrays be sensitive / accurate enough to measure the gravitational effect on light at the scales you're talking about? I'm surprised to read the statement "over distances smaller than the diameter of a hair, nobody knows if gravity acts" as I thought we were accurately measuring all sorts of interactions at or below that scale (10s of…
My apologies for the terse nature of my summary above. We measure the deflection of light bounced from a mirror attached to a test mass hanging from a very fine wire.
That said, the geometry of some of the Texas Instruments DLP MEMS chips has interested some of us for years. The chips are designed to be robust in consumer products, but if they instead designed their mirrors to have very soft springs, we'd be interested in playing with them. Once a year or so, I do a survey of the available MEMS accelerometer chips to see if it's worth building an array from them. They're still a few orders of magnitude away in sensitivity from anything we could put to use.
For the second half of your question: Physicists do indeed measure interactions at scales far smaller than the diameter of a proton. The "trouble" with gravity is that it's so very weak. On a handwavy charge-for-charge basis, gravity is 10^40 (that's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) times weaker than electromagnetism. For an experiment that's purely sensitive to electromagnetism (atomic spectroscopy) or other comparably strong forces (particle colliders) to see gravity, it's necessary to resolve the other forces incredibly well in order to see a tiny residual effect from gravity.
For our work, achieving sensitivity to gravity at the scale of tens of microns isn't that hard. Proving to you that we're not seeing another force/experimental influence (the flip side of that 10^40) is very hard, and is what I spend almost all of my time trying to do.
Thanks for your interest; it's sharing the stoke about this stuff that keeps us going when it's hard (and, if you're a US citizen, you're paying for it! Thank you!).
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a real world problem with real world consequences? It is my understanding that the nuclear waste can be stored safely without too much cost. It is also my understanding that there are ways to re-use the already used fuel rods, effectively 1) making them radiate less 2) getting "leftover" power from already consumed fuel. Psychological footprint fueled by ignorance however... Well, that borders religiousness.…
This looks like a pretty big real world consequence to me: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=chernobyl&safe=off&espv=21... Say what you like about the strength of the evidence linking burning of hydrocarbons and climate change, but it doesn't carry the risk of a meltdown leaving a footprint so big and dangerous that cities have to be abandoned. I don't think it's "ignorance... that borders religiousness" that keeps t…
Agreed, I think many people don't realize the enormous cost of an accident like Chernobyl, and that wasn't even the worst case scenario even though it was pretty bad.
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the waste simply vanishes if you really wish for it very hard.
That is one of the emotions. If you read the article you will read about two reactors that are actually fueled by what we consider waste today. That we don't completely burn the fuel used in a reactor is a 'bug', a misfeature if you will. That was expedient when the initial reactors were being brought online and now is a regulatory pain in the butt. There is nothing in the physics that requires a nuclear reactor comp…
The fact that a reactor is fueled by waste doesn't mean it doesn't create waste or have a waste-disposal aspect.
In the case of any nuclear reactor, the vessel and mechanism itself becomes radioactive and must be disposed of (the same process also leads to embrittlement and other issues with the vessel/structure itself). And the resulting fission products are also still radioactive and require disposal, though my understanding is that thorium designs tend to produce lower quantities with lesser radioactivity than other designs. Or at least, that's the PR / theory, as the designs haven't been put into production use.
Nuclear power in general has been a huge exploration of unintended consequences.
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a real world problem with real world consequences? It is my understanding that the nuclear waste can be stored safely without too much cost. It is also my understanding that there are ways to re-use the already used fuel rods, effectively 1) making them radiate less 2) getting "leftover" power from already consumed fuel. Psychological footprint fueled by ignorance however... Well, that borders religiousness.…
This looks like a pretty big real world consequence to me: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=chernobyl&safe=off&espv=21... Say what you like about the strength of the evidence linking burning of hydrocarbons and climate change, but it doesn't carry the risk of a meltdown leaving a footprint so big and dangerous that cities have to be abandoned. I don't think it's "ignorance... that borders religiousness" that keeps t…
What relevance does Chernobyl have with modern nuclear power plants?
A honest question, because I am under an impression that with modern regulations and reactor designs the chance of a meltdown or less severe nuclear disaster are infitesimally small, granted that 1) regulations are being followed(which they weren't in Chernobyl) 2) safety of operation is being maintained and that the plant itself isn't faulty(which again wasn't case with Chernobyl).
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#47The dynamics by which nuclear reactor design cease to be "fun" resonates very strongly with yesterday's post on creativity, and in particular on simonsarris's mention of John Cleese's video on creativity. The how to kill creativity bit at the end in particular.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6862240
I've got my own thoughts and doubts over the ultimate viability of nuclear energy and of the net potential of technology, but brakes on creativity itself, whether introduced or intrinsic to the system, are of concern.
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a real world problem with real world consequences? It is my understanding that the nuclear waste can be stored safely without too much cost. It is also my understanding that there are ways to re-use the already used fuel rods, effectively 1) making them radiate less 2) getting "leftover" power from already consumed fuel. Psychological footprint fueled by ignorance however... Well, that borders religiousness.…
It can be stored safely, but so far a good waste solution hasn't been implemented, at least in the US. With the cancellation of Yucca Mountain, the current "interim" long-term storage plan is basically on-site dry cask storage scattered everywhere. The spent-fuel pools are an even bigger mess. Many of them are filling up, and fuel isn't being transferred from them to longer-term storage even when it could/should be,…
A non-US citizen here, so I have practically no understanding of the politics related to US nuclear power.
However, the Wikipedia article for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository seems to mention that the cancellation was for political rather than for technical reasons. Wouldn't this imply, that the opposing forces aren't technological, but rather political? As in, if there's will, the problem can be at least partially solved?
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can be stored safely, but so far a good waste solution hasn't been implemented, at least in the US. With the cancellation of Yucca Mountain, the current "interim" long-term storage plan is basically on-site dry cask storage scattered everywhere. The spent-fuel pools are an even bigger mess. Many of them are filling up, and fuel isn't being transferred from them to longer-term storage even when it could/should be,…
A non-US citizen here, so I have practically no understanding of the politics related to US nuclear power. However, the Wikipedia article for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository seems to mention that the cancellation was for political rather than for technical reasons. Wouldn't this imply, that the opposing forces aren't technological, but rather political? As in, if there's will, the problem can be at least part…
Oh, no disagreement there. I don't think there is in principle a problem with safely storing nuclear waste, in the sense that it would be technically impossible to do it or anything. The problem is that in practice the current solution is to have a bunch of it hanging out in "interim" storage that is not really well planned or designed as permanent storage. That's mostly a political problem, and secondarily an economic incentives problem.
Re: Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore
#50To make an an HN-relevant analogy: The FDA-hobbling of 23andMe pales in comparison to what it's like to work with nuclear regulatory frameworks and societal concerns regarding nuclear science. When I was an undergrad, DOE was willing to pay the university the entire relicensing and operating costs of the on-campus TRIGA. The university declined, knowing that the requisite environmental impact study for relicensing wo…
> Their opposition has merit; it's easy to point to Fukushima and Chernobyl as major disasters. The disasters are one thing. The constant lying from authorities, government and assigned experts was another. They were caught pants down telling lies and misinforming in handling the Fukusima accident. This breaks trust. And for projects like that, that involve billions of dollars (enough to fuel much payola and greed),…
Sources, please? I don't disbelieve you; I want to know more. (And precisely what you're referring to.)