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Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

antaresindustries.com

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Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#61

Post by pfdietz »

api wrote: post #51
pfdietz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Economically absurd, much more expensive than reprocessing or fast waste burning reactors.

I don't think that's the case, if launch costs are low enough. The options you describe there are quite expensive. Reprocessing costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000/kg. Even fast reactor have trouble disposing of the seven very long lived fission products. A fully reusable launcher might get costs down to $10/kg to LEO. Even if one had to wrap the waste in 10x its mass in launch armor this could be much cheaper than reprocessing.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#62

Post by pfdietz »

jampekka wrote: post #49
pfdietz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

And the armored waste carriers to fall back to Earth and be recovered for relaunch.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#63

Post by pfdietz »

hgoel wrote: post #53
pfdietz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably not worthwhile. If you just leave it in orbit you're going to have to track it and worry about debris/micrometeoroid strikes. The ideal would be to stick it in some permanently shadowed crater on the Moon, it'd be a stable environment without wild temperature swings and much lower risk of somehow ending up where people are. But that's a long way to go and a lot more risk to take for now.

Once it's in orbit the cost of moving it farther out needed be very high. Just evaporating it with solar energy in very high orbit will allow the solar wind to carry it out of the solar system.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#64

Post by rayiner »

tech_ken wrote: post #57
rayiner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The empirical evidence has nuclear being uncompetitively expensive. France nuclearized 75% of its grid in the 1980s while the solar folks were faffing around. It's not a cost issue, it's that anti-nuclear folks have choked out the industry. We need to take the boot off the neck of nuclear. Wind and solar aren't an avenue to moving up the tech tree of civilization, which will involve using vastly more power.

> moving up the tech tree of civilization Life isn't Civ 6, there is no tech tree to climb.

Incorrect. Compare Bangladesh to the United States.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#65

Post by tech_ken »

rayiner wrote: post #64
tech_ken wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> moving up the tech tree of civilization Life isn't Civ 6, there is no tech tree to climb.

Incorrect. Compare Bangladesh to the United States.

Tech development != tech tree, history is nonlinear and ecological. Linear, unlockable "tech trees" are an ahistorical fantasy necessary to make some video games fun and digestible. Applying them to the real world is like trying to win a war by replicating the Battle of Helm's Deep or something.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#66

Post by dpark »

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.

Unless you live in Sci Fi future where space travel is magically free, this is a pretty bad deal since sending a pound of spent nuclear fuel out of earth orbit takes 50+ pounds of fuel. Sending all the spent nuclear waste into space would be something like 10 million tons of fuel.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#67

Post by rayiner »

tech_ken wrote: post #65
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. Compare Bangladesh to the United States.

Tech development != tech tree, history is nonlinear and ecological. Linear, unlockable "tech trees" are an ahistorical fantasy necessary to make some video games fun and digestible. Applying them to the real world is like trying to win a war by replicating the Battle of Helm's Deep or something.

I’m not saying it’s literally a tree. My point is that we need vastly more power to upgrade to the next level of civilization.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#68

Post by dpark »

pfdietz wrote: post #61
api wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically absurd, much more expensive than reprocessing or fast waste burning reactors.

I don't think that's the case, if launch costs are low enough. The options you describe there are quite expensive. Reprocessing costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000/kg. Even fast reactor have trouble disposing of the seven very long lived fission products. A fully reusable launcher might get costs down to $10/kg to LEO. Even if one had to wrap the waste in 10x its mass in launch armor this could be much cheap…

Why would launch costs be low? $10/kg is fantasy land. UPS won’t ship a kilogram across the country for $10.

And who wants spent nuclear fuel in low earth orbit? This is a far worse location for spent fuel than buried in a bunker. This is a worse location than Times Square.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#69

Post by Gud »

netsharc wrote: post #58
mDyJzDPmBdG wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a bit of context there were 11 companies participating in program and only 2 achieved critiality, and the deadline included in "DOE Reactor Pilot Program" was "July 4, 2026", and Aalo Atomics is the only one that might also make it in time.

Sigh, everything is being done for political purposes, now Dear Leader Donny can proclaim on the quartermillenial celebrations that "we achieved a nuclear milestone!". And maybe add that this is possible because of his nuclear physics genius abilities. I wouldn't even be surprised if the achievements are like "Full-Self Driving", announced hastily with boasts and then slowly revealed to be full of Elon.

Honestly these political rants contribute very little, no offence.

Re: Antares achieves criticality of Mark-0 reactor

#70

Post by tech_ken »

rayiner wrote: post #67
tech_ken wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech development != tech tree, history is nonlinear and ecological. Linear, unlockable "tech trees" are an ahistorical fantasy necessary to make some video games fun and digestible. Applying them to the real world is like trying to win a war by replicating the Battle of Helm's Deep or something.

I’m not saying it’s literally a tree. My point is that we need vastly more power to upgrade to the next level of civilization.

Right but “upgrading to the next level” is exactly the type of cognitive error that I’m against, it’s forward-looking Whig history. There is no “levels” of civilization, there’s only the arrangements we have now and the ones that will occur in the future. Maybe those arrangements will have different pros and cons than we have now, maybe they’ll have more sophisticated engineering practices, but there’s no objective “development score” that is being maximized it’s just more humanity.
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