Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval • Hacker News Board

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#541

Post by vlovich123 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #83

vlovich123 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a paper on that? 40 trillion sounds like a lot and I’m curious how that number is generated.

I can't think of a specific paper/s off hand but having been at labs where they do climate modeling and going to every talk I could I've heard estimates of tens of trillions to hundreds. So the ballpark at least passes my sniff test, though I know that this isn't a hard source. It is also difficult to estimate the damages and costs of climate change which is part of why costs vary so widely. (e.g. do you include even…

Just because someone modeled isn’t particularly compelling. Peer review, meta studies, and testable predictions are critical.

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#542

Post by roenxi » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #519

roenxi wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Solar does not have the special handling and proliferation issues that nuclear waste does. That is also what I'd expect to see if people aren't taking the issues seriously, so it isn't really evidence of anything. > You cannot just say "Well no one is looking into it for solar, so nuclear should get a free pass too!" Sure I can. The evidence to me suggests that, for equivalent amounts of effort and adjusting for th…

Are you suggesting I am not taking it seriously, while also saying "Sure I can" when it comes to ignoring nuclear waste storage issues? Waste amounts are "tiny", and "bury it in a hole somewhere", ignoring time and cost components. Hard to take you seriously.

> Are you suggesting I am not taking it seriously[?] .... [it is h]ard to take you seriously.

I was sorely tempted towards sarcasm by that combination.

But I'm suggesting exactly that, and that we should standardise to not taking the waste of either solar panels or nuclear particularly seriously, given they are both very minor problems that can be handled by the people involved.

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#543

Post by natmaka » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:53 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #536

natmaka wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Germany/France ratio of emissions is relevant because the real difference of emissions if much lower than your graph shows (at worse 1.4 instead of 1.7), and I described (above) why: France has less industry ( emissions for stuff is done elsewhere), is less rich (less stuff) and its climate is less cold. It is pertinent because it shows that nuclear power isn't a major factor there. But we both already agree on t…

You seemed to miss the part where I, twice, referenced CO2eq emissions per capita from energy along and not country wide.

Your sentence was "France has one of the lowest CO2 emissions per capita" (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24371196 ), and in our context I understood that you presented it at a result mostly due to the use of nuclear power, however it absolutely isn't (nuclear power only offers a tiny fraction of this achievement, at the price of many new difficult problems).

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#544

Post by natmaka » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #535

natmaka wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany spearheaded the decline in emissions in the European Union. Source: https://www.iea.org/articles/global-co2-emissions-in-2019 > There is no free lunch here Indeed, however the risk induced at run-time and by its waste seems higher with nuclear than with renewables. >> Other think that we may have to chose a "100% renewables" option. >This relies on two things happening (one of, or a combination). 1) The grid…

> "Germany spearheaded the decline in emissions in the European Union." Yes, but this is possible because Germany's emissions are amongst the highest in the EU to begin with. Although Germany is making progress and can be commended for it's investment in renewables, more than 30% of it's electricity is still produced from coal (hard coal and worse, lignite), which results in one of the highest grid carbon intensities…

> to close existing nuclear plants, some with many years of life remaining, was a political and emotional one rather than rational and scientific.

Seems debatable because it seems that, in Germany, most/many (?) citizens are not willing to see nuclear plants running nearby.

It may not be rational. I think it is. There are counter-arguments, and counter-counter-arguments, and so on... up to the point of the debate confining to ethics/metaphysics: do we have the right to create long-lived dangerous waste? Or even the simple "do those who accept have the right to expose those who don't, given that nobody can behave in order to escape the effects of a disaster?" All this leads to much more generic debates (politically dangerous), moreover no politician wants to remain in history as the one who maintained some nuclear plant which, afterwards, caused a disaster.

> Keeping existing nuclear plants operating would have

... induced risks. Even field experts warn us about it.

In France: https://www.liberation.fr/futurs/2016/03/03/il-faut-imaginer...

In the US: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nucl...

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#545

Post by godelski » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 4:12 AM UTC

natmaka wrote: post #543

godelski wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seemed to miss the part where I, twice, referenced CO2eq emissions per capita from energy along and not country wide.

Your sentence was "France has one of the lowest CO2 emissions per capita" (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24371196 ), and in our context I understood that you presented it at a result mostly due to the use of nuclear power, however it absolutely isn't (nuclear power only offers a tiny fraction of this achievement, at the price of many new difficult problems).

Literally the first sentence https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24376918

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#546

Post by shadowprofile77 » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 6:45 AM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #507

shadowprofile77 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layman's question: I don't see how this small reactor is so unique or why it took so long to be developed for regulatory approval. The article claims it produces about 50MW of power with a planned 60MW version. Well, there are already very compact reactors in use on today's aircraft carriers (the A1B and A4W) that produce a much larger 500 to 700MW per module and are also relatively small (after all they fit on indiv…

The $1/2 billion they had to spend due to paperwork related to certification of the design. From an earlier comment[1] from a different thread about this approval quoting NuScale's press release: "NuScale spent over $500 million, with the backing of Fluor, and over 2 million labor hours to develop the information needed to prepare its DCA application" Military reactors don't have to go through this process and those…

Also, I can't even begin to imagine how much paperwork would be necessary (in literal visual, procedural terms) for the cost of fulfilling it to reach half a billion fucking dollars and 2 million man hours to fulfill. What would this even contain? Multiple 200+ page technical laboratory test breakdowns for every single nut and bolt and washer in the reactor set-up?

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#547

Post by Gravityloss » Mon, Sep 07, 2020, 12:39 PM UTC

jjoonathan wrote: post #449

Gravityloss wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear reactors run at cool temperatures compared to say gas turbines. And they are powerful. So the surface area for radiative cooling is proportional to the power divided by temperature to the fourth power. So the cooling would need to be very big.

Right, but there is no shortage of metals and ceramics that can maintain cohesion (and strength!) at high temperature -- I'm thinking about those videos the machinists post of tools slicing through metal at an obscene rate with incandescent tooling. You don't even need ceramics to do that, there are steel alloys that stay hard and strong enough to slice through (soft) steel while incandescent, although for wear optim…

It would be more possible for a high temperature reactor that can stand the high heat. A regular low temperature reactor would require a huge radiator for the same power.

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#548

Post by bluejellybean » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

Klinky wrote: post #503

bluejellybean wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, why not? As long as the waste dealer is offering a deal that is satisfactory for me as the landowner/waste site, I would happily store said waste. Your question is a bit absurd; nobody is suggesting to keep it inside of someone's home. Should an individual not be allowed to make rational decisions about their land and property? If I owned 20 square miles in the desert, why shouldn't I be allowed to lease…

Your neighbors and county can certainly challenge the use of "your" land. I think you're assuming that ownership means you can "do whatever the hell you want". Ordinances, zoning, right of way, eminent domain, and federal regulations often restrict what you can do and may require ceding control of parts/all of your land, and if your neighbors are really pissed, they could certainly raise hell and make it very difficu…

Of course, this, I believe, the person I was responding to was somewhat implying and what I was hoping to hint upon in my comment. The discussion around nuclear, and really most politics, is around ownership and the limits to what you can do with what we call 'yours'. Just because I want to personally dump a bunch of waste, unprotected from my neighbors, doesn't mean I should be allowed to potentially pollute their land or contaminate their water. I find it far easier to have discussions like these when you remember that land 'ownership' (in the US anyway) is really a lease agreement to the government and your neighbors, our country may use the word ownership, but it really isn't in the most literal sense.

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#549

Post by bluejellybean » Tue, Sep 08, 2020, 8:17 PM UTC

jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #325

bluejellybean wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, why not? As long as the waste dealer is offering a deal that is satisfactory for me as the landowner/waste site, I would happily store said waste. Your question is a bit absurd; nobody is suggesting to keep it inside of someone's home. Should an individual not be allowed to make rational decisions about their land and property? If I owned 20 square miles in the desert, why shouldn't I be allowed to lease…

In my personal philosophy, as a landowner you are responsible not only for yourself and your neighbors, but also for the next 7 generations of people who will be using that space after you. So to me, no you have no right. But that's just my own opinion.

Personally, I would agree that it's your responsibility for your own land, but I also don't believe in forcing owners to do what I personally want them to do. If you can own a farm without polluting across the street, say,to my house, I really can't care what you do. If you want to sell the farm and throw up a bunch of houses, again, as not as you don't screw with my land and my ability to pass it on to future generations.

I do NOT agree that I an responsible for my neighbors or their land and this is part of the issue. If my farm dumps a bunch of crap or ejects a ton of pollutants into the air, this harms my neighbor and should be limited. If instead, I build my farm and is net 0 pollutants to your land, why exactly should you be able to do on 'my' land, or put another way, who is the victim?

To frame this another way that I think is fairly similar to nuclear, I think large scale organic farming is extremely taxing to the land in the long run and is a fairly terrible agricultural practice at our current scale. Does this mean we should enact laws and regulations to stop organic farming? I'm really not so sure, I can understand both sides and I don't think this type of legislation will ever be so cut and dry.

Re: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval

#550

Post by tandr » Wed, Sep 09, 2020, 3:44 AM UTC

mnw21cam wrote: post #432

tandr wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I don't get why this is not considered as an option anywhere.

Because it's a really really bad idea, for several reasons. 1. If your rocket has a failure during launch, you're likely to spread the nuclear waste over a large land area. 2. Even though we really haven't generated that much nuclear waste, it's still many many rocket-launches-worth. That gets expensive. Much more expensive than sticking it in a hole in the side of a mountain. 3. Launching something into the sun take…

Thank you. I did consider 1st point, but I dismissed it (maybe wrongly) with higher success rate of launches in the future, crashproofing payload etc. But the 3rd did escape my mind (no pun intended)