It looks like the Department of Defense is considering such reactors again [1], and the author of this article is very much against it. So much so that he published this exact same article at least 3 times before [2], [3], [4].
It’s common for identical articles to be on different websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication Which traces it’s roots back through TV, radio, and newspapers. Historically thousands of newspapers used to publish the same comics.
I am not sure we can draw definitive conclusions from a bad experience in the 60s anyway, in the very early days of nuclear energy. Think of what aviation looked like 20 years after the flight of the Wright brothers. You would never board a plane today by that standard.
If you're not above walking right up to the line that separates misleading from lying the state of bleeding edge tech back in said tech's early days is a perfectly fine source to draw definitive conclusions from. You see this kind of dishonest behavior across a wide array of subjects.
It really does read like a scare mongering fear article. Including mention of problems but no concrete followup with current details, or at the very least a mention of no resolution to the issue as of a specific time of fact-finding.
Portable nuclear reactors sounds like a new way for government contractors to make a few billion. I suppose now that the war on terror is winding down they're all scrambling for new revenue.
Nuclear has two enemies: the fossil fuels crowd, and the solar/wind crowd.
The latter doesn’t like nuclear because the plants are still big corporate driven endeavors so they don’t “democratize energy”. The socialist faction of the Democratic Party isn’t particularly interested in solutions to climate change that don’t require massive government expansion into the energy market.
What about taxpayers who are sick of bailing them out?
In Illinois, we have multiple nuclear plants that deliver a large % of our energy. Taxpayers have also had to bail out the nuclear companies because they cannot manage their plants. There is currently another bailout bill being discussed. [1]
Are “massive corporate bailouts” preferred to “massive government expansion”?
Is it possible that, in practice, nuclear isn’t the silver bullet people on HN claim?
It's possible the plants had to be bailed out because the industry is 'sickly' and survives on subsidies, or is choked by regulations, and so cannot find a robust equilibrium via a more free market.
I guess from that point of view, if you want to make nuclear work as power, then take your hands off, and let people make money off it, but have enough of a structure there to protect the population. I guess it's not easy, but it's probably easier than everyone thinks.
It’s odd how you only view the issue from the “point of view” you created from thin air. Maybe try to take a step back, remove underlying assumptions, and learn how things are playing out in the real world.
Excelon is a publicly traded, for-profit company. They operate as a utility and have $30 billion+ annual revenue. [1] Unlike all the other utilities in Illinois, they continually come to taxpayers asking for bailouts.
Maybe it’s just them, or maybe the government is at fault, maybe there is another factor. Either way, it seems that many pro-nuclear folks on HN simply ignore the real world costs in favor of ideological (or “gotcha”) arguments.
Well you know the real, but I don't see you coming up with any solutions.
> $30 billion+ revenue
That's revenue. What's the profit? It's not going to work unless you let people make money.
I'm not pro-nuclear. I'm not anti. I don't have skin in the game, and yeah, I don't know anything about this. Or your particular situation. But maybe that outsider perspective is something you need. I'm just thinking. About systems and how to make this efficient. Maybe you should try that too.
But yea, those bailouts you mentioned, they're for unprofitable plants in Byron and Dresden. So don't pay them, and let them fail. So what? Get elec from gas. It's cheaper anyway. Or, factor in the cost of emissions, and pay the nuke guys more for making clean.
Either way it's not the fucking company's problem of not being able to manage it. It seems like it's the state's issue of not being able to allocate its resources properly, and letting itself fall in the trap of politicizing and blame pointing, rather than solution finding. It's not the companies responsibility to run the plant at a loss. That's the state's got to solve that problem.
This is a fucking non-issue. The plant has power that's too expensive: So let it die. Oh, but it's good power, it can't die: So keep it alive. Problem solved. Either way, it's not gonna help if you pretend, "Oh I'm such a big expert, I'm so right about this and non one else is," right? That's not gonna help.
You got angry at me 'cause I had some idea about this. It's not my fault--No point blaming anyone else or angry at me--it's your (IL, Chicago, politicians' and peoples') responsibility to fix this. It's not mine. I just had an idea. And it's a pretty good idea too: Let the fucking market decide, don't get bogged down.
==That's revenue. What's the profit? It's not going to work unless you let people make money.==
Instead of looking it up, you have decided to create a new strawman argument. Excelon had net income of $1.9 billion in 2020, $2.9 billion in 2019, and $2.0 billion in 2018.
==But yea, those bailouts you mentioned, they're for unprofitable plants in Byron and Dresden. So don't pay them, and let them fail. So what? Get elec from gas. It's cheaper anyway. Or, factor in the cost of emissions, and pay the nuke guys more for making clean.==
These are gigantic plants that employ loads of people (entire towns) and deliver electricity to millions. Excelon takes advantage of this political realty by threatening to shutdown the plants every few years without a state bailout.
==You got angry at me 'cause I had some idea about this. It's not my fault--No point blaming anyone else or angry at me--it's your (IL, Chicago, politicians' and peoples') responsibility to fix this. It's not mine. I just had an idea. And it's a pretty good idea too: Let the fucking market decide, don't get bogged down.==
Is this a serious response? I "got angry at you" by responding to your comment and adding real-world examples? Sorry for hurting your feelings.
This is all a distraction from the main point. Illinois gets the highest percentage of energy from nuclear (54%) of all US states. At the same time, the nuclear operator has to continually come back to the state for bailouts. This does not square with what I hear from the "pro-nuke" crowd (high initial costs, low ongoing costs). I am simply asking for an explanation of why that wouldn't happen on a larger level if we invest more heavily in nuclear as a country.
> Instead of looking it up, you have decided to create a new strawman argument. Excelon had net income of $1.9 billion in 2020, $2.9 billion in 2019, and $2.0 billion in 2018.
That's not what I said. I asked where was the profit? The strawman is your pretending that overall profit, just erases the need to have profitable individual plants. Which is precisely the point you are wailing about: the shut down of Byron and Dresden, because they will become unprofitable.
You frame it as, "Excelon takes advantage of this political realty by threatening to shutdown the plants every few years without a state bailout." but the reality is the plants will lose money without charging more for their electricity. I mean, the state is buying the electricity, the plants have been audited, they're not rorting you guys--who do you think should foot the bill? It's theft to just expect Exelon to subsidize you. But, like I said, you don't have to pay them.
> Is this a serious response? I "got angry at you" by responding to your comment and adding real-world examples? Sorry for hurting your feelings.
Yeah, totally serious. You didn't think it was serious? Are you really saying you didn't get angry at my initial comment? And then set out to attack me in what you were saying? You should never apologize for what you're not responsible for. You're not responsible for my feelings. If you think you should apologize, just apologize for whatever you did: your choices and actions. That's a general point. But specifically...You didn't hurt me feelings. You couldn't hurt me feelings, but I'm saying, that's how you came here, with anger. Am I wrong?
"Illinois gets the highest percentage of energy from nuclear (54%) of all US states. At the same time, the nuclear operator has to continually come back to the state for bailouts."
When their plants make money, it's not a bailout. It's a price rise, right? Why so averse to paying it? Or just letting them die. If anyone is to blame for becoming dependent on the operator, it's the state. I think your anger about this is misplaced toward Exelon, probably because that's the story your politicians tell and they'd rather you hate Exelon than them?
" I am simply asking for an explanation of why that wouldn't happen on a larger level if we invest more heavily in nuclear as a country."
Well the real question is, are you ready to hear an explanation? Anyway, I don't owe you an explanation, and there's no point saying one that won't be well received--you guys have to figure this out for yourselves--but, since you're asking so nicely--;p ;) xx--I think there need to be brutal choices. If you got in deep with a shark that you feel is playing you or price-gouging, or even just (another way of saying), you didn't diversify your suppliers and now feel their cost is too high, I mean, what can you do? You just have diversify away to other suppliers? It will be brutal, but it has to be done, to avoid this. Or you have to accept--and somehow find the money for--the higher price. Or if you think you can run the plant at a lower cost, then somehow do that--maybe convince the government to nationalize the plants, and then run them as a state-owned utility...but, sadly, I have doubts that would result in price cuts.
Unless you walk away from the table, Exelon has little incentive to find ways to cut costs. I suppose they know they've got you over a barrel if you can't shop around. So I suppose you guys need to figure out how to get off that barrel? :p ;) xx
==But specifically...You didn't hurt me feelings. You couldn't hurt me feelings, but I'm saying, that's how you came here, with anger. Am I wrong?==
Yes, you are wrong. I came with facts and an actual real-world example. Not sure where you sensed anger or why an internet comment hits you so personally. I think it's important to focus on the actual topic.
==the plants will lose money without charging more for their electricity.==
Again, you are ignoring how the relationship actually works. Excelon (ComEd) comes to an agreement with the state on what the rates will be, in advance. Now, Excelon is coming back to the state (again) and claiming they cannot operate based on the rates they have already agreed to (again).
==Yeah, totally serious. You didn't think it was serious? Are you really saying you didn't get angry at my initial comment?==
No, I didn't you were serious, that is why I asked. Thanks for clarifying as it helps me understand where you are coming from. I questioned your initial comment because it included so many assumptions that aren't attached to reality.
==When their plants make money, it's not a bailout. It's a price rise, right? Why so averse to paying it? Or just letting them die. If anyone is to blame for becoming dependent on the operator, it's the state. I think your anger about this is misplaced toward Exelon, probably because that's the story your politicians tell and they'd rather you hate Exelon than them?==
This is not an accurate picture of what is happening and a weird assumption thrown in to try and insult. ComEd, the division of Excelon that operates in Illinois, paid a $200 million fine last year for bribery [0]. Both the initial bribe and the penalty come out of the fees I pay them to operate as a utility. On top of that, the rates they charge are pre-negotiated with the state. If they can't make enough based on those rates, they are making bad business decisions. This is the bottom line, and you have not addressed this fact yet in all of your comments.
==Well the real question is, are you ready to hear an explanation? Anyway, I don't owe you an explanation, and there's no point saying one that won't be well received==
To recap, you cannot explain why a large nuclear expansion in the US would work out differently than in Illinois. That was the simple question. I read 500+ words and still can't find the answer.
> Yes, you are wrong. I came with facts and an actual real-world example. Not sure where you sensed anger or why an internet comment hits you so personally. I think it's important to focus on the actual topic
I didn't say it hit me personally. I was saying that hit you personally. you keep thinking it's the other way around. You say you came with facts in the real world example but I guess I saw anger in how you needed to (and continue to seem to need to) frame what i said as, "out of thin air", not "taking a step back", and ”only view the issue from the “point of view” you created from thin air," and not having "removed underlying assumptions," nor "learned how things are playing out in the real world.”
That's a framing which is like very dismissive and not respectful of the position or perspective I bring. so it seems likely that you're not going to listen to what I'm going to say because you think it is stupid, has no basis in reality and not well thought through.
So I guess I saw yer anger there because why would you need to so disrespectfully dismiss someone else's position unless you are afraid of it or angry at them for having raised it. but there's plenty of generous ways you could find value in the perspective that I brought. But instead of acknowledging the value that was there you thought you needed to start your argument by looking down on it. Thereby trying to frame yourself as someone with an authoritative knowledge and perspective about this compared to as you framed what I was bringing, as lacking on this qualities that you can bring.
I think when someone displays that kind of extreme one-sided bias it's often driven by anger and fear. And it doesn't have anything to do with the reality but rather is a reflection of their own reaction.
So hopefully that clears things up, there.
That's good I didn't know that these prices were arranged beforehand. But I could have assumed that were the case without Really changing what I said. Because I'm pretty sure that these prices were agreed to or part of a contracted also included provisions that the prices could change to some extent it could be revised I'll put the full stop so I'm thinking that excellent is not in breach of contract here they're just doing what was as you say actually in the contract but it seems like you're the one who's probably pretending that excellent hasn't been living up to the contract but in fact it seems more like the narrative comes from the state, and maybe the state is saying this to cover how it's now bucking its obligations under that contract to meet the revised prices. And instead of copying to that it's creating a politicized issue out of it and arousing up some public anger and perhaps you've been included in this political delusion. No I don't know I'm not saying that's for sure but can you really say that's unequivocally false? There's no possibility of that? Exelon is 100% in breach of the contractual obligations?
so that was your bottom line. We've just redefined how that actually works. Now there's questions hanging over your bottom line assumption that Exelon is wrong and I wonder how you were going to resolve those.
you going to say that it's an insult to suggest that the political narrative about this maybe somehow deceptive and that you may have believed that. But that you want to just end yourself from this truth of politics my framing it as an insult suggest that you will not be able to accept some of the realities of the situation if you choose to view them as insults. Because you'll see them only a statements designed to insult rather than statements of fact are you really defending the notion that a politician would never ever even dream of creating a fake narrative that incorrectly mislaid responsibility away from themselves in order to cover their own asses and encourage the population to believe that fake narrative?
> To recap, you cannot explain why a large nuclear expansion in the US would work out differently than in Illinois. That was the simple question. I read 500+ words and still can't find the answer.
hold on will you ever ask me to explain that? That was never what we were talking about, was it? seems like you're moving the goal posts. But anyway it's irrelevant related point just you hadn't specifically asked me to explain that but from the way you reacted to a discussion so far it seems like you're not really open to hearing me explain about anything. So not that I'm really interested in the answer because it's not about me but I wonder why that is. And in any case that makes it seem less likely it's not that iconic explain so you cannot hear. Because I guess for you the conclusion is already forgone.
basically I feel sorry for you here at this point because it seems to me the following situation will unfold. as you led with this arrogant misframing of your position as being right and my position being without value and "wrong". It says that that's where you're invested that's what you need to believe and when someone needs to believe that it's very unlikely for them to be able to hear let alone admit that the way that they're thinking about this was somehow incorrect or could somehow be improved. So I think it's very unlikely that you're going to concede any ground or any points here and I think it's very unlikely that you're going to admit that the main arguments that I make that contradict your positions are right or have merit. So I wonder what is your desire to participate in what for you is just simply one-sided discussion if it is not simply to play out this theatricality of your own rightness that you need to believe? in short you're trying to prove your point and not learn something and I feel sad for you about that because it seems you got stuck there and what if your point is wrong--you're just going to persist in believing that delusion because you need to feel right? Well I feel sad for you about that because you won't see this whole picture and you'll stay stuck there.
But look if you're asking about how the situation for nuclear could play out in a successful way in any scenario nationally or in a state level and I think it all depends on how it is set up. The interaction between all the players the utility companies the politicians the state and the population and how they think about it. so all of the stakeholders have a responsibility to create a situation that works and I definitely believe it's possible to do that I don't believe there's any structural obstacles to creating working nuclear power utility that's cost-effective if people have the will to do that. And so far everything you've said that you see is either the company's fault or unsolvable I see as having a different bearing of responsibility for the cause but also very much solvable. so I guess the question is how do you convince someone with a defeatist attitude that change can actually happen? well I am guess and I'm pretty sure that words aren't going to do it. So you have to show them the change. so I suppose you're going to have to wait until you see that nuclear utilities are working in Chicago to believe that it's going to be possible. So I guess you going to have to wait until then to be able to have a proper and balanced discussion about it. Y
For you. It's kind of sad, but Oh well.
I get where you're coming from. It hasn't succeeded, as you see it, so why should you think it should?
==I am simply asking for an explanation of why that wouldn't happen on a larger level if we invest more heavily in nuclear as a country.==
In response, I got lots of insults (anger, one-sidedness, dismissive, not respectful, defeatist attitude, arrogant, etc.), but nothing approaching an answer. You haven’t presented a single article or study or source that defends anything you’ve claimed. Maybe next time you could give people who you “feel sorry for” the same grace you expect them to show you?
==I didn't say it hit me personally. I was saying that hit you personally. you keep thinking it's the other way around.==
A bold comment from the person posting a 1,300 word rebuttal on Friday night.
In response, I got lots of insults (anger, one-sidedness, dismissive, not respectful, defeatist attitude, arrogant, etc.), but nothing approaching an answer.
People always say this, that they did nothing wrong, and then they got insulted, but they don't cop to their responsibility. When what actually happened was you led with this framing I've described and which you don't acknowledge, and pretend you were innocent of any wrong doing in that...and play the fake victim card saying you've been insulted when really it's your bad behavior being pointed out. It's hilarious how often this is the passive-aggressive tactic of people wanting to be abusive online. Like they think they can find a reasonable outlet for their abuse, by not saying anything too direct, but just using framing. Then when they find someone who pushes back against that--they fold and play the fake victim card. But I can totally see through that, and I pointed it out. And then, predictably...you play the fake victim card. Always the wannabe try-hard bullies do like this.
And they always use the discussion about how they've been wronged to distract from how there actually is an answer and discussion in there that they simply want to refuse to look at. Because they're not interested, really, in that. They're interested in using this as a vector to take out their own frustrations on others, the topics are merely a pretext. In short your tactic is, come across as abusive and arrogant to any dissenting position, then ignore any actual dissenting position rather than engaging in it, then play the fake victim by saying you did nothing wrong, and that it's the other person who was wrong for point out the wrong you did.
You haven’t presented a single article or study or source that defends anything you’ve claimed.
I don't need articles to tell me what to think. I'm talking about possible futures. You don't want to engage with that, but--haha--you need articles? You don't need articles, you need to change your perspective. You've already had the chance to hear different information and you've ignored that. It's confirmation bias...articles and studies will not help you. Stop trying to deflect responsibility for the why of you having this view...it's just on you. It's not up to anyone else to convince you, it's up to you yourself to choose to see. I'm sorry but there's no way you can get around this.
Maybe next time you could give people who you “feel sorry for” the same grace you expect them to show you?
Oh-hahah-that's rich man. The "grace" I gave you was talking to your arguments and temporarily ignoring your abusiveness, and confirmation bias. But of course, you ignore that generosity. And I didn't expect you to show me anything--I had an open mind. But all that abusive framing, it doesn't mean it's OK. Just because it doesn't hurt me...doesn't mean it's OK, right? Anyway, I temporarily ignored it, but you persisted and I pointed it out, now you cry about it. Maybe next time if you don't like having it pointed out...don't do it then, huh? You really expect people to be silent and compliant, willing little victims, in the face of that bad and abusive behavior? I get if you feel that way and if that's what you want, but you're not gonna get that. Not from me, anyway. So yes, I do feels sorry for you: because you must feel isolated and alone to behave like this...trying to talk about issues only as a pretext for engaging in abuse of others online just to feel anything, some significance from human interaction, to feel you can still have an impact. And yes, I do feel sorry for you, no need for the quotes because true, because you think this is going to get you somewhere, but there will always be people like me who can see through it, and who will call you out about it. Much to your seeming displeasure. And I feel sorry for you because you just seem stuck there, in this sad moment, doing this stuff. And it's sad.
==I didn't say it hit me personally. I was saying that hit you personally. you keep thinking it's the other way around.==
A bold comment from the person posting a 1,300 word rebuttal on Friday night.
Is it? I can multitask. I get a lot done, even on a Friday night. But I don't even think it was Friday night when I replied you. See where in different timezones. Maybe that's hard for you to understand...but I think it's just you don't wanna see it. Just like everything else here you don't wanna see. So you're saying my Friday night was no good, huh? Really? My Friday night was great, thanks. Why you starting with the Friday night talk, tho? Want to pretend to look down on someone else's in your imagination--why?--Must be your Friday night is what you actually look down on. That's sad
But more to the point of why I replied. You like to pretend I'm here replying and that means it's about you. All about you. Hmm, I get you wanna see it like that, but that's not how it is. See...for me saying this can be be important to me, without it having to be about you, nor about how you pretend hit me because you didn't. But it seems you want to insist that I'm here because of you, where it's all about you and you insist that you really did hit me, again revealing your bad faith reason to come here. So you derive your sense of significance in this interaction by pretending you are hurting someone else...when all I really see you doing is trying to do that, but failing. Just being abusive and ignoring talking about what you can't admit you failed at, the topic at hand.
So you see that even when I push back against you...we still can't get past your, everything-is-about-you attitude. I guess that must be filling a hole. Which means I suppose that the more I reply to you, the more you derive from this. From that point of view, it's not in your best interests that I reply, and encourage this behavior. But like I said, I'm not here for you, I'm here for me. And I believe that if I point this out, if you let yourself see the pattern...you will change it eventually. Sometimes all it takes is someone to have a little bit of pushback, to hear something they haven't heard before. Granted...I admit it's probably deep seated for you. But I still believe that me laying it out clearly like this, is going to have an imprint in your mind. And is going to change your behavior, if you choose to let it. And that helps me feel good...to think that my contribution to how you're doing wrong right now, is gonna help you do right in future. That will mean that other people are saved from your abuse. People unlike me. People who can't stand up for themselves, nor see the patterns clearly. People who would just cop the hurt, when they shouldn't, when it's not theirs. When they don't deserve it. But anyway...that's a bonus. Like I said, I'm not here for you, I'm here for me. I'm just here saying what I choose to say for myself.
So you're the guy replying, playing the fake victim card, complaining how your bad-faith tactics and abusiveness are being pointed out...but saying, it didn't hit you? But saying the other guy is bold for saying it didn't hit him? See I think you said that first. I didn't start with needing to pretend I hurt you...you started with that. That was your bag. And I'm just pushing that back on to you, because it doesn't apply to me. But think it reveals, it's another thing that reveals, that it applies to you. Like I said before, I didn't say it hit me personally. I was saying that hit you personally. you keep thinking it's the other way around.
I guess because that's what you need to think here. For me, I didn't think you'd reply this comment...so I didn't check. Because it was clear your argument had nowhere to go compared to what I said. But considering your bad faith abusiveness that seems to have driven your engagement here, rather than topicality...I guess it makes sense you would come back--again I was extending my generosity, my grace, to you by not wanting to see that abusive side of it and just consider you are here for the topic)--because that's what you're here for: to play the fake victim card, try to pretend I'm wrong, and try to pretend you've hurt me. Because that's what motivates you here: trying to hurt other people under the cover of being doing nothing wrong or being the fake victim yourself. Pretty predictable reaction...actually. I guess if you're Friday night was so great why would you come back here on a Saturday morning to whinge about it?
Anyway, thank you very much for this. I loved this interaction. It was very valuable to me and thank you for contribution to me here. I really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing what you say next if anything. If not, no worries, it was so good so far!
Agree this is a persuasion piece not straight journalism, but in the author’s defense, the article was originally published under a CC license, and he could have no idea it was posted on this website.
I think so. At least here in NL, the journalist class decided somewhere in 70s or early 80s, they had an obligation to do 'good' instead of only doing inpartial reporting.
Of course, their defintion of 'good' might differ from mine or yours.
The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists in the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who exposed established institutions and leaders as corrupt.
Don't they operate some of the largest fleet of nuclear powered vessels currently operating? Maybe share some of the issues they've had with those (obviously using very old tech). Sub / Aircraft carriers etc. The mission endurance on a carrier is amazing on the power plant side.
260,000 shaft horsepower for 20 years between refueling.
I'd be curious how much oil would need to be burned instead of this (bunker fuels tend to be HIGHLY polluting).
I mean, you're not wrong (I assume), but you're also just excluding the hours which involved accidents.
The USS Puffer [1], Proteus [1], Dace [1], California (twice) [2], Truxton [2], Gurnard (twice) [3], Hawksbill [3], and Abraham Lincoln [3] have all unintentionally leaked nuclear waste into the various bodies of water [1].
The USS Guardfish managed to irradiate it's own crew enough that 4 of them were sent to the hospital, and later managed to contaminate the submarine again while dumping radioactive resin into the wind. The latter form of incident is described as "quite common" [2].
The USS Aspro [2], Sam Houston [3], etc managed to leak radioactive water internally.
The USS Sam Rayburn "is mildly radioactive when it returns from patrol in February 1984. The Navy says this radiation is so mild it cannot be detected by a Geiger counter. " [3] (whatever that means)
(I make no claim that this is a complete list, or even a particularly reliable list since I didn't check my sources sources or anything like that, the point is there have definitely been accidents).
It's true that "there have been no spectacular meltdowns", but you're also talking about operating in an extremely controlled environments of a ship that you control. I don't think the army is going to have as an easy a time at it.
1. Not all accidents result in the release of radioactivity.
2. Which non-US agencies monitors radioactivity levels in the air and water in the middle of the pacific ocean, with the resolution necessary to detect a small naval accident, before it gets diluted, or lost in the background noise?
It's obvious that the Navy has not had a Chernobyl accident. It's less obvious that it has had no accidents.
Both instances are still zero accidents from a nuclear perspective.
Both sites have been visited every few years since they were located to check on the reactors. The design on both is working as intended, and no radioactive material has been detected to be leaking from either wreck. US naval nuclear reactors are (supposedly) designed such that they shouldn't lose containment if the vessel either sinks from an accident or is destroyed by enemy activity.
Wasn't the Thresher likely sunk by an electrical fault causing the reactor to automatically shut down, followed by an inability to blow the ballast tanks and rise to the surface?
to be fair Hanford dates back to the Manhattan Project. wWe have learned allot about containment in the intervening 80 years since ww2. Like don't mix chemical weapons waste with nuclear waste and throw it in a single walled container that is prone to corrosion.
The author is a geologist at University of Vermont with no apparent connection to energy space except for his environmental activism.
on a separate note, NASA had a recent breakthrough after decades of "paper reactors", building and testing the safest and smallest reactor so far based on a new solid core design https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/kilopower/
My physics teacher in high school was a retired naval nuclear engineer/tech/something. He blamed Jane Fonda (the actress) for a huge portion of the anti-nuclear activism that basically entrenched the power of oil companies and cartels. It's funny/sad how badly the save-the-forest and anti-nuke activism of the 1970s is coming back to bite us so hard now, with wildfires and global warming.
Makes me wonder which activist movements today will turn out to have been net negative in another 40-50 years.
It’s cold hard economic issues that held back nuclear power rather than any environmental concerns. The US is actually close to the ideal nuclear mix from a cost basis.
At best operating at full capacity with moderate subsides it’s roughly competitive with coal operating 24/7, but the grid has wildly fluctuating demand and nuclear’s price per kWh is roughly 3x as expensive at 30% power output as at 100%.
France was able to export a lot of nuclear power while importing significant electricity to meet demand and they still had capacity factors fall below 70%.
The most surprising issue with nuclear is actually fuel costs. Yes, it’s cheap to mine and enrichment isn’t that expensive, but refueling ends up being quite expensive in part because it’s slow. 3+ weeks of downtime every 1.5-2 years is effectively a 1.5+% fuel cost even if everything else was free. Dropping that to 1 week on it’s own wouldn’t really change the economics much but there are many such issues.
Economic issues were caused in part by political opposition. An extreme degree of reviews and legal objections can't help the economics.
And research into new designs that might improve on economics and safety isn't going to be as profitable or as common if there is always going to be a virtually insurmountable hurdle of objections on spurious environmental grounds, so the economic pressure that has caused coal plants to become more efficient can't be applied.
Plus, that coal vs nuclear economic calculation doesn't account for the costs of warming, nor for the intended electrification that abundant nuclear power was supposed to enable.
It all has its roots in disproportionate opposition and silly old movies that portrayed nuclear plants as potentially exploding with ten megaton blasts.
> And research into new designs that might improve on economics and safety isn't going to be as profitable or as common if there is always going to be a virtually insurmountable hurdle of objections on spurious environmental grounds, so the economic pressure that has caused coal plants to become more efficient can't be applied.
The core economic issues aren’t based on the physical design of the reactors. Better designs might have dropped net costs by 20%, but that doesn’t allow you to follow the demand curve. It doesn’t allow you to operate without vast quantities of water. It doesn’t reduce fuel costs, or allow efficient operation in extreme temperatures. Let alone figure out reasonable regulations in a small corrupt country that’s just going to build one.
Worse, the industry can’t afford to invest it’s own money in these kind of improvements. We aren’t talking 100’s of millions or low billions, were talking 10’s of billions that might possibly payoff decades in the future. People see Nuclear already reviving billions in research funding and it hasn’t really paid off yet. That’s what makes such investments difficult.
It's clear these challenges don't nessesarially make Nuclear expensive when you look at France. They have the highest mix of Nuclear by some margin and the cheapest power in Western Europe.
The problem seems to be that 'we' don't know how to build nuclear reactors anymore. France has to replace their aging nuclear powerplants in the next few decades. But building a new one proves to be very difficult.
It is not clear to me what changed. There have been a few accidents. But Chernobyl is mostly unrelated to current reactors. Fukushima is of course more annoying but it doesn't explain why so many current projects that try build a nuclear powerplant are failing.
I suspect nuclear did as well as it did, in the past, because it was viewed as a thing that the best people should work on. Now, it's viewed as a backwater, or even a dead end. This won't attract the same kind of people.
France doesn't have the cheapest power in Europe. Even for non-households, they are beaten by a large margin by the likes of Denmark - where wind is the biggest source of generation. And household consumers pay pretty much the average European price for electricity. [1]
If you want to look at France, google the most recent French attempt to add nuclear capacity - Flamanville 3. It's 15 years late and nearly 6 times over budget and still not operational.
Indeed. This 'success story' led to a state law (2015-992, from 2015, the "loi relative à la transition énergétique pour la croissance verte") stating that the part of nuke-produced electricity must fall to less than 50% in 2025, from 72% then, and that renewables must replace it.
In France nuke-power is backed by gas (which produced 10.3% of gridpower in 2017).
Curious. Denmark has either the 2nd highest or the 4th lowest power prices in Europe depending on whether we're talking about household or non-household users.
There must be something strange going on there beyond just having wind power, that is a huge divergence. Driven mainly by taxes I see.
edit: Sorry - I missed your last sentence on first reading - so yes it's taxes.
Danmark is a huge outlier in terms of how much it taxes household electricity consumption. Including VAT, nearly 70% of a Danish household electricity is tax. Non-households are taxed much more lightly. This is a policy decision I guess to encourage more efficient utilisation.
But the actual wholesale cost of electricity in Denmark is very low because of their use of cheap wind power.
I don't have anything more up-to-date than this[1] which is for 2019 but the second page shows a bar graph where the level of tax on household electricity is shown.
Heavy French nuclear subsides separate the cost of electricity from what consumers are paying. It’s not obvious what’s going on because their nuclear generation is done by the government which doesn’t need to balance the books.
>that coal vs nuclear economic calculation doesn't account for the costs of warming, nor for the intended electrification that abundant nuclear power was supposed to enable.
Even ignoring warming, coal externalizes a huge cost in the form of local pollution and its effects on health and destruction of natural resources.
The target of the activist is not the government, it is other citizens. The goal is to increase the disapproval and outrage above the activation energy of government agencies or legislatures. Anti-nuke activism hit as the first wave of the environmental movement was peaking (think anti-pollution efforts against some really, really bad industrial practices and the anti-litter movement) and it also pulled in a large swathe of anti-war activists who were looking for their next mission after the Vietnam war wound down. Combine these with some genuine hubris on the part of the nuclear energy industry and a public that has a hard time assessing actual risk and you get a perfect storm of sorts. It was easy to pass regulations and laws that made nuclear more difficult to deploy and casually ignore the consequence that this had on making petroleum products and coal the only viable alternatives.
The US government absolutely listen to people when it comes to things like approvals because politicians need to get re-elected. Harry Reid stopped the yucca mountain complex after the govt had already agreed to it for nuclear storage.
And numerous more. [0x0] Plus nuclear power was never found to be cost-effective. Maybe this decade. I understand reactors will be more uniform in new designs.
I'm not making an argument as to whether nuclear energy is good or bad, cost effective or not. My prior on that is "it depends", but I don't know much about it, so it's a rather weakly informative prior.
I was specifically addressing parent's point. Chernobyl had a disproportionate effect on the public perception of the matter. I hadn't even heard of half the disasters in that list, for instance.
Not on that list is the Three Mile Island accident that happened almost simultaneously with the release of the movie "The China Syndrome", seven years before Chernobyl. In the US at least, I suspect that was very influential.
More consequential was the passage in 1978 of PURPA. With PURPA, the grids began to be opened to non-utility competition -- and this was cheaper than utility nuclear plants. Initially it was mostly just cogeneration, or at least things that were nominally cogeneration, but mostly run to make power to sell to the grid. But this (and the cessation of the growth in electric demand) ruined the case for new utility nuclear plants.
The safety concerns of the activists could have been quelled by developing thorium as a fuel. it appears to be very safe, too safe maybe to get funding. Instead, the technology that got developed was the one that created weapons grade material as a byproduct.
"We'll build one near you. Oh we could build a completely safe one, but instead we're going to build the mostly safe one. We're willing to put you at risk if the commies also feel more at risk."
I don't normally sympathize with nimbys, but I think that pitch deserved some pushback.
We should have more nuclear powerplants. I think 75 years ago it was assumed that by now everybody and their cat would have enormously powerful and cheap nuclear generators for their house, flying car etc. It's a pity the technology has stagnated and only Iron Man can afford it.
It'd be nice, but the weak link will always be humans. In an idea world there's no issues, but when you start extending beyond engineered lifespan, changing regulation to allow looser safety tolerances, changing regulation on how tests are performed so that you can still pass them, etc then it becomes an accident waiting to happen. I'd like to have them just as much as everyone else, but history has shown that we can't be trusted to act responsibly.
> When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards.
> The proposal comes as most of the nation’s nuclear power plants, which were designed and built in the 1960s or 1970s, are reaching the end of their original 40- to 50-year operating licenses. Many plant operators have sought licenses to extend the operating life of their plants past the original deadlines, even as experts have warned that aging plants come with heightened concerns about safety.
> The nuclear industry is also pushing the NRC to cut down on safety inspections and rely instead on plants to police themselves. The NRC “is listening” to this advice, the Associated Press reported last month. “Annie Caputo, a former nuclear-energy lobbyist now serving as one of four board members appointed or reappointed by President Donald Trump, told an industry meeting this week that she was ‘open to self-assessments’ by nuclear plant operators, who are proposing that self-reporting by operators take the place of some NRC inspections.”
> The nuclear industry is also pushing the NRC to cut down on safety inspections and rely instead on plants to police themselves.
The same way the FAA allowed airplane manufacturers to decide wether their planes needed re-certifying when they changed them, and allowed them to certify themselves?
Because that's also how we got the Boeing 737 Max.
>Because that's also how we got the Boeing 737 Max.
You mean the plane that was grounded for having 4 accidents per 1 million flights? Do you mean the industry with 1 fatal accident for every two million flights? An industry so safe that most people have a higher likelihood of dying on the drive to and from the airport than on their flight? If that is your nightmare scenario of safety failure, I’ll happily take the FAA model of safety.
Speaking of comparisons, how many people do coal plants kill every year with fly ash, just as a matter of course and not even as a safety failure? We aren’t comparing nuclear power risks to nothing.
But there still are huge conflicts of interest in self-certifying equipment, wether it’s an airplane or a nuclear power plant.
In this case, following the crashes, the FAA's safety model is one of the reasons the EASA refused to delegate safety approval to the FAA on that specific plane.
Clearly signalling they consider Boeing, the FAA and the FAA's safety model to be untrustworthy.
I really don’t see why a process that is considered untrustworthy in the aerospace industry should be applied to nuclear power plants.
Now, to be clear, if some US airline's plane full of US citizens suffers some malfunction due to some design defects and crashes in the middle of the US because some government agency in the US decided to trust some US plane manufacturer to certify itself, it’s sad, but it’s a US problem for the US people. I really couldn’t care less.
Same with US power plants. Should a US nuclear power plant suffer catastrophic failure because some US regulator couldn’t learn from the FAA's mistake and decided to trust some US power plant operators with their own inspection, it would be a problem for the people living in and around the US.
Regarding the totally unrelated coal plants tangent and the blatant attempt to change the topic, I don’t care either. Over here, considering the dangers they pose, it’s been decided they should be entirely phased out over the next year.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that I am somehow against nuclear power, or consider it inherently too dangerous.
I am not, and I do not.
I’d even go as far as to say I consider it to be one of our best bets in facing climate change, air pollution, and our need to quickly and drastically lower global greenhouse gases emissions.
And if we held cars to the same safety standard as the 737 Max actually achieved, I suspect nobody would be allowed to drive. The odds of something going wrong were only just on the wrong side of 1 in a million.
You're talking about a lapse in safety relative to an industry that is 2nd only to Nuclear power in doing no harm. In absolute terms they were still reasonably safe.
Where did I say, or even hint, that the entire aerospace industry is unsafe?
What I did say, is that this approach seems remarkably similar to the process that is both partially credited with the 737 Max issues, and one of the reasons some other countries' regulators refused to trust the FAA's later decisions regarding that plane.
> You're talking about a lapse in safety relative to an industry that is 2nd only to Nuclear power in doing no harm.
Yes, and that’s why when evaluating the use of a safety process in one, it is both relevant and interesting to look at the impact some conceptually similar process had on the other's safety record.
Talking about how harmless radioactivity is with the radioactivity of bananas is as unscientific as talking about growing a third arm because of radioactivity.
No matter how many bananas you eat, your radiation exposure will stay the same as your body keeps the amount of potassium constant.
Grave nuclear accidents probably happen every few decades and more smaller reactors will make that just more likely.
>bananas leak more radiation than functioning nuclear power plants.
Keyword there is "functioning".
I believe GP's point is that the public can't be trusted to maintain household-scale nuclear reactors to the same level of safety that large-scale operators with competent staff and chains of responsibility can.
Yes, the processes would be different. A misfunctioning gas furnace will kill everyone from CO poisoning, and wood fireplaces are even more dangerous.
Surely an in-home reactor would require safeties of an appropriate degree. Perhaps those would make in-home nuclear infeasible, I wouldn't know. With a bit of careful planning, any given house could easily take out half a city block or more given someone with intent to cause harm, though, and without knowing the actual amount of radioactive material in any given in-hime reactor, I couldn't begin to compare.
Edit: this is why I am a whimsical commenter on the internet and not the person in charge of whether or not we give redneck engineers nuclear reactors.
I think household reactors are beyond the cutoff point for diminishing returns and/or risk vs reward. I feel like neighborhood level reactors disguised as small houses, like some electrical sub stations [1] would be the sweet spot. You could cut down a lot on all the infrastructure needed to push all that power from centrally located power plants out to neighborhoods, while still maintaining a separate, inspectable, controlled station.
I mean it kind of seems ridiculous to think we could have radioactive material fissioning at our house or in our car. My neighbor barely takes out their trash.
If that is thanks to the Green Movement, then let me thank the Green Movement.
Your neighbor may have problems handling their trash, but they for sure have countless dangerous chemicals around their house, and yet they live safely. I'm not even talking about the obvious (household cleaning agents) - their fridge and AC unit likely have pretty nasty substances circulating inside.
The trick is, as always, to make a sealed system and scare people into not messing with it.
The gases used as refrigerants are actually not that dangerous at all, which is why they're used in such situations. If the thin pipes of your fridge or AC leak all their refrigerant in your home you'll be fine. Maybe have some difficulty breathing, it's not healthy but nothing serious.
Having a nuclear reactor in every house would be insane. Even if they don't leak radiation during their lifespan in normal operation. You can scare most people out of opening them. But can you scare every single person out of doing so? Considering some will be mentally unstable too, or outright psychopathic.
The most dangerous thing a mad person can do right now is blow up their house with natural gas. Which is pretty bad, it can damage houses in the nearby area. It absolutely pales in comparison to creating a mini meltdown or even nuclear pollution however. One alpha-emitting dust particle inhaled into the lungs is enough to kill over time.
And this is not a fantasy. It's happened in real life. Consider the Goiania incident for example and it's not the only one.
> But can you scare every single person out of [tampering with a home atomic reactor]?
I'd bet there's a reactor design that's tamper-proof enough to be less lethal than vending machines.
That just leaves very determined, educated terrorists trying to harvest the fuel for radiotoxins or a dirty bomb. There are probably less convoluted ways to cause mass death and destruction than that, but "radioactive" and "fallout" are certainly more terrifying than "gunman" "bomb" or "poison" even if the actual damage is likely much lower.
> The most dangerous thing a mad person can do right now is blow up their house with natural gas.
Wiki says the Oklahoma City bomb cost USD5000 and was equivalent to 5000 lbs of TNT. I don't have a TNT figure for gas explosions in buildings (even the worst-case intentional one you describe), but it sounds like they're way less powerful than that. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271492483_Hazard_an...
Don't forget to weigh all this doom and gloom against the massive (green) upsides of distributed power generation!
> That just leaves very determined, educated terrorists trying to harvest the fuel for radiotoxins or a dirty bomb. There are probably less convoluted ways to cause mass death and destruction than that, but "radioactive" and "fallout" are certainly more terrifying than "gunman" "bomb" or "poison" even if the actual damage is likely much lower.
Really, look at that Goiania incident. 93 grams (3.3 oz, less than half the weight of an average smartphone) of radioactive material found by some scavengers who dragged it around the city.
Result: 4 people dead. 249 contaminated of which many with health issues. More than $100 million in cleanup. It was one of the worst radiological incidents.
Now imagine having this kind of material available in every house...
There'd also be massive proliferation of nuclear waste which may or may not be processed and stored correctly.
This was true 90 years ago, which is why Einstein and Szilard invented their refrigerator; it was relatively commonplace at the time for a refrigerator to rupture and fill the house with sulfur dioxide, killing the inhabitants. Ammonia absorption refrigerators were even worse, and the earliest refrigeration equipment from the 01860s used "chimogene", which we now know as propane and butane, which is not toxic but disastrously inflammable. Midgley's invention of chlorofluorocarbons turned out to be the key, and ever since then, fridges and air conditioners have been mostly built without any pretty nasty substances.
Well, except for the ozone. That's getting better, though.
>the earliest refrigeration equipment from the 01860s used "chimogene", which we now know as propane and butane, which is not toxic but disastrously inflammable
Hydrocarbon refrigerants went out of vogue for performance reasons but were/are still used the world over in certain applications and there's been a recent uptick now that we care more about not destroying the environment. The fuel:air mix you need for fire is narrow enough that ignition is mostly not a problem in practice, it also helps that society have moved away from open flames for a lot of heating and lighting applications.
The refrigerant was not the only place CFCs and HFCs were used in refrigerators -- they were used as blowing agents in the foam insulation. Today, cyclopentane is used as the blowing agent.
>The trick is, as always, to make a sealed system and scare people into not messing with it.
No, it is about knowing where the cutoff point of risk vs reward is. It is about understanding when diminishing returns makes something impractical. Trying to design a nuclear reactor small enough for a house or car, that is also so safe, tamper proof, and unweaponizable that it is ok to just have 10s of millions of them floating around is pointlessly difficult. Building a reactor to go into personal vehicles that crash all the time is ridiculous. It’s the different version of the flying car, when we realized that maybe having everyone moving themselves around in personal vehicles that would plummet out of the sky in the event of mechanical failure instead of just pulling over in the breakdown lane. It is a “that would be cool” idea.
Replacing coal plants with nuclear plants is a far better idea. Building self-contained smaller reactors to provide power on the neighborhood, sub division, or factory complex level is a far better idea. Why would I even want a reactor taking of space in my house when I could just get the same electricity from a more efficient reactor installed in a large concrete shed for my whole block? Why would I want to buy an insanely over engineered nuclear car, when I could just charge up my Battery Electric using my neighborhood reactor off peak electricity? Or I could fill up my hydrogen electric car produced by my neighborhood reactor through electrolysis during times of excess power generation.
Until it's time to dispose of the old fridge, and then your idiot neighbor just opens it up and releases it in to the air, because proper disposal requires a fee he doesn't want to pay, and then breaks down the fridge to tiny pieces to throw in the regular trash.
And why is the fridge getting disposed of? Odds are it's because the refrigerant had already become one with the atmosphere and the fridge no longer refrigerates. This is also the case for window A/C units as well.
Most of the needless venting comes from automotive systems and that's going to be a non-issue in a few years as OEMs continue to switch over to newer refrigerants that are less polluting.
Your statement is plainly untrue and I don't know why you posted it. Electricity is a minority of GHG emissions (<25%). Even if electricity became 100% GHG-free, and even if you converted transportation and heating to electricity, you still have plenty of other GHG sources like agricultural, smelting, etc.
Just because nuclear power has been unfairly maligned doesn't mean it would unilaterally solve our climate problems. Beware mood affiliation when posting short pithy comments.
With EVs, nuclear could solve a lot more of our energy mix. Maybe EV tech would have been more developed earlier if we had cheaper electricity.
But that still ignores the huge capital costs of building a nuclear power plant, not to mention the liability insurance that has to be provided by the government.
In a world of cheap nuclear electricity, more possibilities would open up in these other areas like smelting etc. It would be possible to have a higher carbon tax, use more electricity-derived heat for industrial processes (even just electrolyze and burn hydrogen if needed).
Farming is a tricky one but again, with cheap electricity things like hydroponics become more feasible. A lot of things are physically possible but simply ruled out by the economics of energy cost.
The main reason why nuclear isn't a thing except in communist countries (or countries with a big centralized state power), is that scaled nuclear require central planning. You really can't expect private operators to run nuclear, because the cost of the fuel is actually 0.01% of the operating cost, and the most efficient way of running a nuclear reactor is full power.
There was a movie about Russian arctic base, where the hero for some reason had to spend the night outside and warm himself with discarded portable nuclear plant. When he manages to get back inside first thing he was looking was iodine tablets.
Looked very handy thing that nuclear hand warmer. Like big cabin stove, which runs for ever and needs no fuel.
I think you are being downvoted because of the word « communist » which is exaggerating.
But anyway there is some truth in what you say but I’ll would rephrase « centralized power » as « political will + state controlled company ».
You probably need this to be operated by a state controlled company because as much as I trust nuclear power, I’d never trust plants managed with a profit driven company. There must be unlimited warranties in case things goes wrong. But that is far from communism. You just can’t allow scenarios such as the power plant going bankrupt while being operated or maintenance costs being reduced to pay bonuses.
A lot of liberal countries have state controlled electricity providers. In France we even have multiple energy companies but just one is state controlled.
This reminds me of SL-1, an experimental reactor that was meant to be used in the arctic circle. Part of the operation of the reactor required manually lifting a control rod a few inches out of the reactor. However, possibly just to see what would happen or as a suicide attempt, they removed the rod too far and the reactor immediately exploded and killed 3 operators. At least, those are some intriguing theories about why the control rod was removed too far, but in fairness we really don't know what they were thinking and it may have simply been a mistake. Although a properly trained operator mistakenly lifting a heavy control rod too far begs more explanation. Whatever the case, it is an intriguing story.
Between this and some other stories from early nuclear age, it makes me feel as if that system was designed by software engineers.
If it's known that the control rod is supposed to be between 0 and X inches out, and going past Y inches (Y > X) will likely cause a fatal failure, one would expect someone to machine a piece of metal that makes in impossible to move the rod further out than Y inches.
I read those accounts of people manipulating nuclear reactors by hand, and can't stop but think: this is dumb, even for 1950s era technology.
That manually operated control rod was sophisticated compared to some of the earlier experiments. They used to stack bricks around a chunk of uranium, so the bricks would reflect neutrons back at the uranium. Eventually, once you stack enough bricks around the uranium it goes super critical and just goes nuts. They used to manually search out this super critical threshold by manually stacking bricks and then slowly move that final brick towards and away from the uranium and watch it balance on the line between sub critical and super critical.
One day, someone dropped the brick and there was a blue flash. Lots of neutrons were released that day. People died from radiation exposure soon after.
There's also a story about a fuel rod getting jammed, so they tried to force it with a crane and ended up breaking it in half, spilling highly radioactive water all over the place, and then the fuel rod catches on fire because it's not being cooled anymore. It's comical how quickly these disasters escalate.
What about the "demon core?" It was a core of highly radioactive material, and instead of bricks, there were two hollowed out hemispheres made of some metal that reflected the radioactivity. Some guy put one hemisphere below the core, and had another one on top AND WAS USING A SCREWDRIVER to carefully titrate how "closed" the top hemisphere was to the bottom one. His hand slipped and he killed himself and some colleagues.
Apparently the "demon core" got its name because it was involved in more than one supercritical accident.
I think the demon core was the "chunk of uranium" they were stacking bricks around. It's been several years since I read the book so my memory is fuzzy. I think the later experiments used the metal hemispheres instead of bricks.
"The core was placed within a stack of neutron-reflective tungsten carbide bricks and the addition of each brick moved the assembly closer to criticality. While attempting to stack another brick around the assembly, Daghlian accidentally dropped it onto the core and thereby caused the core to go well into supercriticality, a self-sustaining critical chain reaction. He quickly moved the brick off the assembly, but received a fatal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later from acute radiation poisoning."
To be fair, it is apparently considered likely that the overextraction of the rod was a deliberate murder-suicide. But yes, it seems that there's a reason that the US Navy still has a nuclear power program and the Army doesn't ( https://www.historynet.com/going-nuclear-idaho-falls.htm seems good; I am not an expert).
There was a lot of time pressure in those days of the Cold War. The other side was also working rapidly without much concern for safety.
It was probably a consciously-made balance of risk, with relatively "minor" accidents here and there as a result of rushed development vs. the risks associated with getting overtaken by the Soviets. Technological superiority, particularly in that field, was a major factor in the balance of power at that time.
The "rod got stuck, they pulled too hard to free it" explanation fits very well with the known facts. The rush to blame the operators may have been due to a bias to protect the project.
> Those in favor of mobile nuclear power for the battlefield claim it will provide nearly unlimited, low-carbon energy without the need for vulnerable supply convoys.
Imagine the situation we would be in if the US military had been using nuclear power supplies at (formerly) our bases in Afghanistan.
I’m a fan of nuclear power but battlefields are the last place I want to see it.
To be fair, the things the Taliban seized were from the “Afghan government” that we had given them. I don’t think there would have been any mobile reactors left for the same reason there weren’t any stealth aircraft.
This is what I think the most often overlooked problem inherent to nuclear power in any form: whenever you create a nuclear reactor, you are betting on future people to handle it correctly. And not only during it's operational life of say 20-30 years, but also during the ages or millennia afterwards. This is quite a risky bet, as no one can predict the future. And centuries without war and/or other catastrophic events have been quite rare.
Far less than 10,000 years ago, humans likely would've written similar messages on things of importance to deter thieves, and we just ignore them now as curses. How does one warn people of the future about genuinely hazardous, long-lasting materials without relying on language (which will certainly change on that time scale) and without the future generation dismissing it as bullshit curses?
The public data on the stationary SM-1A rated it as 20MW and was built around the same timeframe. It's in a remote, low population location. The base was decommissioned and the reactor is still there, soon to be decommissioned according to the link.
That's a really fantastic bit of propagandistic history. I realised from the first that the claimed mission was B.S., though in the end, science actually prevailed.
Oh, and TIL: "Alco Products, Inc.", who manufactured the nuclear reactor used at Camp Century, isn't ALCOA (as I'd suspected), but "American Locomotive Company". It was only in the nuclear power business for about 6 years, shipping its first reactors in 1957, and selling the operation in 1963.
I have always thought it disappointing that safe RTGs are not a more common technology. Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to design one that could be buried in the ground outside, or under, your house, which could provide probably a lifetime of power.
RTGs are generally pretty expensive due to the exotermic isotopes used. Also it needs cooling to get the needed thermal gradient for electricity production, so just burying it into ground would likely not work. The peltier thermocouples also degrade over time.
And lastly, there were some nasty radiation incidents where ex Soviet RTGs were left unattended and random scavengers managed to open the casing, getting lethal doses of radiation in some cases. I guess this could be exasperated by the small and mobile size of RTGs.
That was entertaining reading, something for every manager to read! An excerpt from the summary:
CHANGES IN EMPHASIS AND DIRECTION OF THE ANP PROGRAM
The ANP program was characterized by frequent changes in emphasis and objectives, varying from a research and development program to an accelerated program to develop a weapon system for the
Air Force.
The ANP program was carried out in competition with other programs for national defense. As a result, the importance attached to the ANP program varied greatly throughout its history. Although
it was outside our scope to examine into the reasonableness of or
justification for the frequent changes in program objectives, we do
not believe that a research and development effort of the complexity and magnitude of the ANP program can reach its goal in an effective and efficient manner unless a certain degree of stability
in objectives is accorded to the program. (See pp. 31 to 35)
LITTLE OR NO USE MADE OF CERTAIN FACILITIES BECAUSES OF PROGRAM REORIENTATIONS
During our review we noted that various major facilities had
been constructed at a total cost of about $17,147,000 but were
never used, or used very little, for their intended purposes because of program reorientations.
The two largest facilities were
the Flight Engine Test facility that was constructed at the AEC Na-
tional Reactor Testing Station, Idaho, at a cost of $8,061,000...
The safest places for nuclear reactors are those which are isolated from environmental hazards like weather, people, earthquakes, eruptions. Someplace like the moon or mars. That's why subs and boats have a relatively safe record-no casual interference and containment vessels (large navy boats) that we have a lot of experience building, maintaining and operating by skilled dedicated humans.
I assume they'll never repeat the mistake of having only one control rod, at least.
It would be nice if it were a thorium salt based design, so you don't have to worry about disasters anywhere near as much. (Though I understand that you still have to worry about things like many, many Becquerel of Iodine being built up over time)
Nuclear is not ideal, because its civilizational brittle. Meaning it relies on complex society remaining stable and producing all those artifacts to maintain and recreate it. Add to that a complex supply chain and its less then ideal for a uncertain future.
I can't think of any fuel source that will satisfy virtually all energy use cases with so little risk as nuclear batterization, even when considering the potential ability to lose the knowledge of how to maintain them given a total societal collapse.
What other types of fuel are Armageddon proof? Certainly not coal, CNG, whale blubber, solar, etc......Fire maybe? Even then, might as well consider that the end of civilization regardless.......
The army straight up scares me with nukes... Air force is barely better. The USA navy knows what they are doing with reactors.. at they safe so no clue. But I am not trusting anybody in USA military except for the navy to deal with nuclear reactors.
I'm not an nuclear engineer, but I bet it would be easier to deploy more nuclear energy with a many smaller reactor.
Pro: smaller reactors would be faster to build, as conventional nuclear reactors are large and often use specific techs. They would be built in higher quantities than larger reactors and thus allow more nuclear power generation.
Con: economies of scale might mean it generates less electricity overall.
I would tend to think the opposite would be true - having many smaller reactors would currently require multiplying the number of controlled sites, each requiring security, redundant cooling and safety systems, emergency power, nuclear waste cooling pools and long term storage, etc.
I agree each individual system may be safer if an incident were to happen, but supporting a large fleet of nuclear production sites would be a lot harder in my mind.
And this is if we were to completely ignore the huge set of compliance requirements and forms you'd need to fill out and maintain...
Funny you mention economies of scale because the whole idea of building many, smaller, identical reactors is essentially leveraging economies of scale in manufacturing.
One of the reasons nuclear power is so unpalatable to build is that each plant is a 100% bespoke, one-off build that is insanely expensive and takes decades to pay off through profits.
If you could make one design, and create the tooling (and licensing/safety requirements), you could essentially build an endless number of them as long as you could guarantee the process is repeatable.
This could help, but only if those little reactors were bunched up together so they can share operating infrastructure, including staff. NuScale plans to put a half dozen reactors in the same shared structure, for example.
the most successful "portable" nuclear reactors are those on nuclear submarines, they have been in continuous operation for more than 60 years with very few incidents
"American naval reactors starting with the S1W and iterations of designs have operated without incidents since USS Nautilus (SSN-571) launch in 1954" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_submarine
In the 70s USN subs had 4 accidents. There was three spills irradiated water and one contamination accident.
Russians have even more reactor years in submarines and icebreakers, and cargo ships. They have even floating nuclear power station. They have had two major reactor accidents (we know about).
Military reactors are expensive to operate even when they are quit safe. You need highly trained people 24/7.
It seems to me that military reactors have better safety record than commercial despite accidents. I just listed the accidents.
The safety becomes with cost and performance limit. It's hard to see how smaller nuclear reactors are significantly better than gas turbines in commercial use. The cost comes down with the size.
[1] https://www.defensenews.com/smr/energy-and-environment/2021/...
[2] https://theconversation.com/the-us-army-tried-portable-nucle...
[3] https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/07/project-pele-the-military-...
[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-is-trying-to-bui...