Bill Gates' Next Generation Nuclear Reactor To Be Built In Wyoming (reuters.com) 334
Billionaire Bill Gates' advanced nuclear reactor company TerraPower LLC and PacifiCorp have selected Wyoming to launch the first Natrium reactor project on the site of a retiring coal plant, the state's governor said on Wednesday. Reuters reports: TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, said the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant is expected to be announced by the end of the year. Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels than traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.
The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system's power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion. Late last year the U.S. Department of Energy awarded TerraPower $80 million in initial funding to demonstrate Natrium technology, and the department has committed additional funding in coming years subject to congressional appropriations.
The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system's power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion. Late last year the U.S. Department of Energy awarded TerraPower $80 million in initial funding to demonstrate Natrium technology, and the department has committed additional funding in coming years subject to congressional appropriations.
One can hope (Score:2, Offtopic)
One can hope that he doesn't decide to run it on Windows. If that's the case, it'll just be like that episode of "The IT Crowd."
Protagonists wander into a scene with cops using a robot to defuse a bomb. Robot locks up.
Protagonist: "What OS does it use?"
Cop: "Vista!"
Protagonist: "Oh my God! We're all gonna die!"
Lingo change (Score:5, Informative)
To be blindingly obvious, in case my point isn't clear, sodium's chemical symbol is Na (which is short for Natrium - the old name for sodium).
Re:Lingo change - Oh! (Score:3)
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Re:Lingo change - Oh! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, what are they thinking. Might as well try to trademark the name of a common fruit.
Re:Lingo change - Oh! (Score:5, Informative)
Kind of hard to trademark an established Latin word for Sodium.
A Trademark does not give them exclusive use of the word.
It only grants them an exclusive right to the word for the claimed purpose, which I assume is for the name of a nuclear power company.
So you can still make and sell "Natrium toilet bowl cleaner". You just can't sell your own "Natrium(TM) Nuclear Reactors."
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So I could trademark Reliable (TM) Software
No you can't, because there is already a company named Reliable Software [rsrit.com].
mentions 'software' and 'reliable' in the same sentence
No. The rule is not about "mentioning in the same sentence". It is about using it in a way that misrepresents the trademark.
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I still don't get it. Natrium is a common world.
Natrium is a way of *not* saying the reactor is cooled by sodium. Cooling a reactor with sodium is a bad idea because eventually air, and the water it carries, leaks into the reactor.
Sodium explodes when it comes in contact with water, so keeping people from thinking about explosions with radioactive sodium is probably why they call it "Natrium".
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Metallic sodium does not explode from water vapour in the air.
You can put a lump on your desk and nothing much will happen.
Cut off piece so you get a nice, clean, corrosion-free surface and still nothing happens.
Put the piece into liquid water and things get interesting.
There has to be enough water to react with enough sodium to release energy at an explosive rate.
Otherwise all you get is corrosion.
And just about anyone who knows about the dangers of metallic sodium will already know that it is the same as
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So you can still make and sell "Natrium toilet bowl cleaner".
Sounds fun. They could get Barry Scott [youtube.com] to do the advertising.
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It only grants them an exclusive right to the word for the claimed purpose, which I assume is for the name of a nuclear power company.
Except this isn't a non-related word like an Apple to a computer. This would be like Trademarking the term "keyboard" for a computer or the word "Uranium" for a nuclear power plant. Natrium is not only the latin name for sodium, it's the name actually used in most languages.
I didn't put bicarb of soda in my cake this morning. I put Natriumwaterstofcarbonaat in. They shouldn't be allowed to trademark this, but it would seem that a sciency word was too much for the PTO in the USA to handle. I bet you a dollar
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Well what am I supposed to do, it's not like I can use the word Sodium in my language. Heck only this morning I poured the last little bit of natriumwaterstofcarbonaat into my cake. Will I still be able to buy more at the supermarket on Saturday?
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i thought they where back on the Thorium wagon?
Re:Lingo change (Score:5, Interesting)
i thought they where back on the Thorium wagon?
Nope. Bill's TWR uses depleted uranium, which is U-238.
DU is plentiful and cheap. America has big stockpiles.
A TWR can also burn spent fuel from LWRs.
TWRs may be a big breakthrough ... if they work.
But the only way to find out is to build one.
TWR = Traveling Wave Reactor
LWR = Light Water Reactor
Re:Lingo change (Score:5, Interesting)
Fast reactors can be made to breed plutonium like China is doing now to build more nuclear bombs,
or in this case, Gate's is taking the 'spent fuel' and completing the nuclear cycle. IOW, he is dealing with the nuclear waste that others have refused to do.
I look forward to this reactor. It is exactly what we need.
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Others didn't "refuse to do it". It was a cornerstone of America's nuclear power plan, until Jimmy Carter EO'd it and killed any future for nuclear power in the US.
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i thought they where back on the Thorium wagon?
Nope. Bill's TWR uses depleted uranium, which is U-238.
DU is plentiful and cheap. America has big stockpiles.
According to the natrium FAQ [natriumpower.com] it uses high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) metallic fuel. I wish you were right, this would be a big technological step for nuclear power and may have seen me supporting it however according to The DOE HALEU [energy.gov] uses hexaflouride or CFC114 in the production of the fuel and this is a potent greenhouse gas. Better than in-situ acid leech mining perhaps, but everyone is focused on greenhouse gasses and this is a really nasty one.
Re:Lingo change (Score:5, Informative)
"What's the ... deal"
"Inside the core (3) ... It's a slower and more controlled reaction than in a conventional nuclear power plant"
https://www.intelligentliving.... [intelligentliving.co]
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There have been a LOT of new designs of nuclear reactors, my personal favourite is the pebble bed reactor, but NONE of them have been approved for large scale production, except now.
I'm not a fan of Gates, but I don't actually give a flying fuck who is behind this, I'm just happy to finally see new reactors being built on newer technology and safer p
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But NuScale remains a 3rd gen, while Natrium is a 4th gen and a fast reactor. And unlike NuScale, Natrium is designed to complete the nuclear fuel cycle. IOW, it is the first real solution for our nuclear waste issue, while also being part of a AGW solution.
And yeah, I am no Gates fan, but this is the first real answer.
Pebble Bed Reactor (Score:3)
We had one of those nuclear Wankel motors in Germany, it was not a big success:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Cheaper and safer (Re:Lingo change) (Score:5, Interesting)
Sodium cooling means higher temperatures, which come with higher efficiency in the heat engine. With more energy from the same fuel we can get cheaper energy.
Sodium cooling means that there is no hot water under pressure to flash into steam if there is a loss of pressure. There's no water to disassociate into highly flammable hydrogen and oxygen gasses. Without these things the reactor does not need a large heavy concrete dome to contain a potentially explosive water coolant. This makes the reactors safer.
Being safer and cheaper than existing nuclear fission power does not mean existing fission power technology cannot compete in the current market on cost, or that nuclear fission is not already very safe. It means we could lower the cost of all energy, because energy is fungible to some extent. It means we can make the safest form of energy safer yet.
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That's thermodynamics 1.0.1. (Of course, trying to say that round here will get you castigated for illiberality, or something. Meh.) It may have been invented nearly 2 centuries ago by a Frenchman, but that doesn't automatically make it irrelevant.
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Does this reactor somehow get around those problems?
Yes.
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A much bigger factor is how much it costs to build, maintain, dispose of waste and decommission. Does this reactor somehow get around those problems?
1) This is a SMR, This will lower the build cost a great deal.
2) The long build costs associated with large reactors is due to difference in the site, combined with all of the legal issues from protesters
3) Operating costs are low.
4) this is designed to take 'spent fuel' from other reactors, that would have been buried and been radioactive for 20,000+ years, and will now, be a fraction of the volume and safe in 300 years (majority of it safe in 5) decommission costs on large reactors is high because t
Re:Cheaper and safer (Re:Lingo change) (Score:5, Informative)
Containment is very much required.
Of course, I made no claim otherwise.
Nuclear power as it is done now is far safer than any other energy source we have available to us. A reactor that uses molten sodium coolant has far less rigorous containment protocols because the pressures it is under is very low, and if it leaks then it will quickly solidify. This means a simple concrete box to contain it instead of a complex dome.
A sodium fire is bad but then so is burning zirconium in a water cooled reactor. Dumping water on a zirconium fire is bad, which is why having it sit in a pool of water coolant is bad. Because sodium will not burn in a nitrogen atmosphere we could put the reactor in a concrete box, and put it under low pressure nitrogen. This is so any leak is relatively harmless nitrogen going out instead of oxygen rich air coming in, and a leak in the containment structure can be detected with a loss of pressure (again slightly above ambient air, not multiple atmospheres of pressure). It doesn't have to be nitrogen but it's a logical choice because it is cheap. Argon could be used too, and being heavier than air it will better cover any spilled sodium.
Something under the reactor to catch the melted corium is probably a good idea. Again, if it gets into the water table, boom.
Third generation nuclear reactors do this, it's a solved problem. They have a kind of concrete "catch pan" that will spread out the "corium" so it is not likely to melt the concrete, nearly impossible to sustain fission, and therefore will not go all "China Syndrome" on us. This is assuming that the built in passive cooling fails, and any active cooling also fails, and the processes to stop the reactor from sustained fission fail.
Some second generation nuclear power would require power to lift scram rods into the reactor, or push them into water filled channels, which is impossible in a loss of power accident. Other, safer, designs had scram rods held by magnets over channels that had no water, or the water could flow out easily. In a loss of power accident the rods should fall into place and shut the reactor down. Even if that worked to stop the fission there would be heat produced by delayed fission and short lived fission products. Most second generation nuclear reactors required power to provide sufficient cooling to prevent a meltdown, which was the case for Fukushima and Chernobyl. Then if these reactors melted down the containment was built such that it could burn a pit in the concrete below, then coolant water would pool on top to act as a neutron reflector, making it possible for fission to restart on its own. We learned from this and so no future reactor is going to require power to shut down, stay cool, or in the unlikely event of a loss of containment will fission be restarted inside melted "corium".
You seem to believe that nothing has changed in nuclear power since Three Mile Island. A lot has changed. Three big problems have been solved in the case of a loss of power accident. These same safety elements will be incorporated into a fourth generation design like a sodium cooled reactor. What fourth generation reactors do is remove the dangerous water coolant. Sodium is a dangerous substance to handle as it can burn in air or water, so remove the water, and perhaps even remove the air.
One reason we need to build these prototypes is to test out the safety systems. I've even seen people advocate for the testing of new designs to the point of destruction. We break them so that we can learn how to deal with the breaks, and learn to prevent them from breaking in the first place.
These molten metal and molten salt coolant systems are identical, or nearly so, with solar thermal projects. I'm not seeing near the concerns of fire, environmental contamination, and so on with solar power. Why is that? Oh, right, because "nukular bad".
I'll see people talk about how nuclear power can't load follow so t
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which I do not believe is all that new of a concept
It's not a new concept. Also no where does anyone say it's a new concept. They said "Next Gen". In the nuclear industry when you're ready to build a "Next Gen" plant what it means is that scientists have already been mulling it over for 30 years.
Why not go full nuclear? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why not go full nuclear? (Score:5, Funny)
We could power the windmills with nuclear energy and light up the solar panels too.
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We could, but that would probably be too expensive. This thing benefits via the molten salt storage allowing the nuclear part to run at 100% basically all the time, but granting the plant a surge capacity of about 45% higher than normal.
That would be enough to, for example, cover the different power demands between night and day, on average.
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Wouldn't we then save on the cost of land, infrastructure, building and maintaining solar/wind?
All things we will not have with this alternative.
Re: Why not go full nuclear? (Score:2)
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The real question is how much tax payer money is going to into this money pit and then how much tax payer money is going to go into decommissioning the contaminated site and to dispose of all the nuclear waste.
Probably be a rounding error compared to the fuckton of tax payer money currently going to fossil fuel industry.
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Re: Why not go full nuclear? (Score:5, Informative)
And tax payers do not pay for decommissioning or nuclear waste. Each reactor has a fund for decommissioning and for nuclear waste.
Even WIPP and YUCCA MTN were paid for out of this fund.
The good news is that this reactor takes 'spent fuel' that would have gone into YUCCA, and will finish the nuclear fuel cycle. What will remain will be about 25% of the volume or less and will be 100% safe in less that 300 years (with nearly all of it safe in less than 90 years).
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The short version: "they" in the case of Yucca Mountain was Harry Reid, whereas "they" in the case of Wyoming is Mark Gordon. Different people, different priorities, different parties, different states, different constituencies, different decades.
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why not just run them continuously?
TWRs are designed to run continuously.
The coolant is liquid sodium, which, unlike an LWR, does not need pressure containment.
This means that a TWR can generate a large reservoir of hot liquid sodium during power demand lulls or during surges in solar or wind power production. Then this hot sodium reservoir can generate power during peaks in demand or when wind turbines are becalmed.
So sodium-cooled TWRs can run continuously but still be used as "peakers" to complement intermittant renewables.
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We need an energy matrix. Just 20 years ago, power companies were pushing the idea of using coal everywhere and skipping nat. gas, wind, solar, and esp. Nuclear.
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Nothing's zero emission, but don't let that distract you from the fact that good things have a fraction of the emissions over their lifecycle compared to the bad things.
Re:Why not go full nuclear? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear a lot about nuclear's downsides. Too expensive, too dangerous, not really zero carbon, etc. There is no energy producing technology that does not have some fairly serious downsides, either in manufacturing or in operation. It's better to acknowledge that up front. But let's at least make sure we're comparing apples to apples when we point out manufacturing costs. Do windmills, solar panels, or geothermal plants have zero manufacturing costs? Of course not, but amortized, I'm sure they're far better than a coal burning plant. Amortized, I'm betting a nuclear power plant is also far better than a coal plant as well, even accounting for operational issues and decommissioning.
We're letting perfect be the enemy of good here, because we're still burning coal, natural gas, and oil for power. We should focus first on eliminating those power sources, and reduce the use of gasoline for short-trip personal vehicles where possible. Somewhere beyond that point, we'll have the luxury of looking for alternatives to nuclear as we reduce other CO2 pollutants, like airline fuel and the construction energy. But it's likely we're going to need a tremendous amount of clean electricity for things like carbon-neutral synthetic fuel generation, not to mention all those electric cars we'd like to see on the roads in the future. I suspect we won't be able to afford to turn up our noses at any viable, reasonably clean source.
I think it's a great idea to build a prototype demonstration reactor. If it turns into an expensive boondoggle, so be it. Better to find out earlier than later. But if it ends up working well for a reasonable price? That's worth knowing too, so we'll have one more arrow in our quiver of energy production methods.
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Which gives me the chance to recommend a book I liked.
"Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" doesn't advocate any solution but gives numbers for all of them and calculates just what costs you'd commit to by picking different mixes of power sources.
Tl;dr, energy consumption is huge and all solutions will be expensive and cause problems.
Re:Why not go full nuclear? (Score:4, Interesting)
We're letting perfect be the enemy of good here
No we're not. Nuclear has some crippling *MODERN* problems which need to be solved before it can be considered part of the energy mix going forward. I'm not talking here about not doing research or working on pilot plants, I'm talking about the fantasy that it is still the 1980s and the nuclear can be easily built as an almost green alternative to fossil fuels. The reality is there is nothing "good" about nuclear right now that would justify making it part of the mix.
The prime example of this is to take the best examples of the past and compare them to today. A Slashdotter last week pointed out France went from nothing to 70% of their energy mix coming from nuclear in 10 years. A great example of how nuclear is a good solution. But if you look at this power house of nuclear excellence (pun intended) in their modern projects it paints a different story. Their last reactor project started 2003, scheduled completion in 2008, estimated cost $3.8bn which is a lot but critical infrastructure costs money. The most recent update is that it will miss it's 2022 startup date, and the auditor general concluded that it will over shoot the most recent $19.5bn recent cost estimate which is an eyewatering figure for a 1.6GWe powerplant. Oh and possibly one of the world's most technically capable and experienced companies in the nuclear industry Areva went bankrupt as a direct result of this project and sold off their nuclear assets to anyone who would buy.
That is not a one off. When all nuclear power plants take close to 20 years to build, the industry has a problem. When they all blow out their already high comparative cost by a factor of 4, the industry has a problem. When the companies with decades of experience go bankrupt trying to build power plants (Areva (sold to EDF who agreed to finish construction and no more) , Westinghouse* (sold to Toshiba), Toshiba Industrial (sold the skeleton of Westinghouse to a financial services company), when the core companies involved in the industry say the industry is so dead that they sell off their business to anyone for pennies, the industry has a problem.
I want nuclear to succeed. But there are *BIG* problems with it in it current form, and not technological ones. Until those are addressed we're not letting perfect be the enemy of good enough, we're making an informed decision to stay the fuck away from something so toxic that it's own industry wants nothing to do with it. It's a great idea to build prototype reactors. But the success of this reactor will not determine the success of nuclear being part of the climate change solution.
*Westinghouse is back in the game in a very different way, buying Rolls Royce for their micro reactor technology, and even they look like they will only be building sub 100MW units going forward.
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I'm not talking here about not doing research or working on pilot plants, I'm talking about the fantasy that it is still the 1980s and the nuclear can be easily built as an almost green alternative to fossil fuels.
Okay, but why the difference? You talk as though it's a law of nature that the delays and cost overruns you mention must happen now.
It's like saying that we just can't win wars, because Vietnam. Well maybe look at what we were doing different in the 70s vs the 40s, and figure out how we can win wars again?
Same thing here. Maybe when it comes to nuclear energy we're shooting ourselves in the foot now, and can ... stop doing that? Better to at least look at that, instead of just mumbling "well, guess we can
Re:Why not go full nuclear? (Score:5, Insightful)
We're letting perfect be the enemy of good here
No we're not. Nuclear has some crippling *MODERN* problems which need to be solved before it can be considered part of the energy mix going forward. I'm not talking here about not doing research or working on pilot plants, I'm talking about the fantasy that it is still the 1980s and the nuclear can be easily built as an almost green alternative to fossil fuels. The reality is there is nothing "good" about nuclear right now that would justify making it part of the mix.
Remove the regulatory red tape that goes on for years, and then we can realistically compare the *MODERN* problems with nuclear, especially around costs.
Nuclear has never been built "easily" not necessarily because of the technology, but because of bullshit bureaucracy. THAT is what takes decades. Perhaps rightfully so given the hazards involved, but this is why nuclear costs so damn much. It's a job creator for paperwork pushers.
Cool. (Score:3)
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You mean SCOX?
Re: Cool. (Score:2)
70 years (Score:3)
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I followed the Wikipedia links, it seems like the Democrats under Carter and Clinton were anti-nuke without much appraisal of whether the technology was actually commercially viable.
(I grew up in the anti-nuke 1980s following Chernobyl but I try to keep an open mind)
But if Wyoming have found a NIMBY-free area to build one of these things, all power to them. But it's Sith lord Bill Gates, so YMMV. :)
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Maybe so but as a schoolkid in the 80s we were fed a diet of fears of nuclear apocalypse through war or meltdown.
The moratorium on nuclear power here in Australia persists to this day. "Too dangerous" and/or "too expensive", it is claimed but if Gates' reactors see commercialization in the USA we might get an answer to the latter bit on cost.
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all power to them.
Well, that's the general idea.
Re: 70 years (Score:2)
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More details.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Also tested as the Integral Fast Reactor, where it burned its own waste products.
Can it compete with solar on price? (Score:3)
I got solar in my house and invoice says cost of panel + inverter cost $2500 for 4KW (Total annual generation as calculated by my utility is 6300 kwh). The rest of the cost was installation. Assuming that utility can get the same cost including land + installation, this translates to about $3/w (continuous wattage) which is same as this proposed nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactor has higher lifetime but then its running cost is high too. Also, the decommission cost of nuclear reactor is quite high (and so is the disposal of waste).
The only main benefit of nuclear is that it is base load plant. Since solar is becoming cheaper every year, this looks like its only benefit.
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Most of the cost of nuclear is incurred by bureaucracy and having to pay off various organizations for permits and "inspection" BS. If it wasn't for the hairball of regulations, nuclear would be by far the cheapest form of energy. Nuclear material lasts for years and gets hot on its own all you need is a turbine to work spin off the hot water. It's way cheaper than even hydroelectricity because you don't have to build a massive dam, and that's assuming you have a convenient mountain river.
Re:Can it compete with solar on price? (Score:4, Insightful)
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but your solar panels don't work all the time. Solar is cheap energy but
And so clearly the winning solution is to use solar energy when the sun is available, because it's cheap, and nuclear when the sun isn't, because it's more expensive but continuous.
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Apparently this nuclear reactor would use molten salt for storage in order to provide extra power during peak. So, why is it acceptable for the nuclear reactor to store power to make up for when it can't produce enough but not solar?
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Aluminum-graphine for the win. LFP for stopgap. (Score:2)
The salt isn't mined by congolese children. Or maybe it is, who knows?
So use Aluminum Graphene as soon as it is available. No congolese lithium. No cobalt. No nickel. No copper.
While we're at it, you can go with LFP now. Still needs lithium (although there are a LOT of ways to get that without buying from congolese child-labor strip-mines.) But again no cobalt (the previous generator of minor-miner child-labor anti renewable energy propaganda poster children) and no nickel.
The lithium/nickel/cobalt ce
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The salt isn't mined by congolese children. Or maybe it is, who knows?
I'm not really sure what you even mean by this. Care to elaborate on your point?
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Solar panels don't convert efficiently into heat -- they're not designed to run hot. If you want to store solar in salt, you build a solar thermal plant to heat the salt directly. And people do build those, so obviously they aren't forbidden.
Nuclear power plants are naturally hot, so adding molten salt is a simple easy step to improve load balancing options.
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Solar panels don't convert efficiently into heat -- they're not designed to run hot.
That's absolute nonsense. Solar panels produce electricity. Electricity can be converted into heat with close to 100% efficiency. If you wanted to store the power produced by solar panels as heat energy in molten salt, you could do it without any fancy plumbing and with losses that are no greater than if you were getting the heat from a nuclear plant rather than heating coils driven by a solar farm. You would need to build the giant steam turbines, etc. for the nuclear power plant, but there's no actual rea
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Don't understand the purpose of your ranting. I already mentioned that the biggest advantage of nuclear is that it is a base load plant. It can supply continuous electricity.
Day/night problem with Solar is not that hard to solve in connected grid. If it is cloudy at one place, it may not be at other. Using little bit of grid storage, this is workable. The biggest issue is winter/summer. Again, wind, hydro and biofuel and large storage (like pumped hydro) can provide significant cushion. You only need a smal
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Re: Can it compete with solar on price? (Score:2)
Gas Cooled Reactor that failed: (Score:2)
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how is that relevant to this story of liquid metal cooled reactor?
philanthropy is bullshit (Score:2)
Higher wages is where the real philanthropy is at, Bill.
Mixed blessing (Score:3)
On the one hand, it's nice to see Bill Gates attempt to do something useful with his money for a change, and he's even doing it in his own country, apparently for the novelty of it.
Still, the idea of relying on any product developed by a company founded by Bill Gates generates not a few queasy feelings. I just hope we don't end up seeing a massive BSOD glowing over Wyoming.
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it's nice to see Bill Gates attempt to do something useful with his money for a change
What do you mean for a change? Making rapid COVID-19 tests not useful enough for you? Don't care about vaccination? Are you against women's contraceptives which through Gate's finance has led to the development of far cheaper ones? Don't like his efforts to reduce the cost of healthcare equipment?
And what do you mean by his own country? The overwhelming majority of his spend has been in the support of 3rd world nations such as subsidizing the polio vaccine in Africa.
I just hope we don't end up seeing a massive BSOD glowing over Wyoming.
Sigh, Nuclear reactors already run on Win
The next blue screen (Score:2)
The next blue screen of death will be the most realistic yet....
jjk.... go bill !
Yay clean(ish) nuclear energy
NIMBY! (Score:2)
A salient look at TerraPower (Score:5, Informative)
I've managed to dig out Final Report for CRADA/NFE-18-07194 with TerraPower LLC [ornl.gov] and there is a lot of interesting stuff in there. Apologies in advance, I'm falling asleep, forgive my spelling or grammar errors, I'm crankning this out before I am gone.
What is interesting about this technology.
The main issue with sodium cooled reactors is the explosion risk from air ingress to the cooling system via air leaks. Molten sodium is highly volatile. Worse still is sodium is neutron absorber and so the coolant itself becomes sodium 24, a gamma emitter. A very deadly combination. Conventional breeders try to get around this by having a second sodium cooling loop driving the steam generators - which also increases the capital costs.
The Terrapower concept is trying to get around this by using a molten salt loop to contain the heat and then generate electricity off the molten salt. This is a novel way of smoothing out the need for changing the power output of the reactor to meet demand, instead keeping it at a constant rate and letting the heat mass of the molten salt change. This is good because it means water and sodium don't have a chance to mix.
It does not eliminate the potential for a soduim fire, indeed one of the characteristics is that they can use thinner metal for the pipes to reduce construction costs - this will affect the service life of the reactor.
The catch
There are two main issues at play here witht his technology. The first is re-fueling. It will be really hard to refuel. Terrapower seems to be trying to get around this by using by using a metal chloride fuel salt in the core. which brings us back to materials technology. IIUC fuel salts affect alloys in nasty ways so the core of the reactor is a completely new concept. This means we have zero reactor experience with this technology. It maybe better to build a smaller 150Mw reactor first.
The next is the failure mode of this reactor. Say good bye to the negative void co-efficient argument as a fail safe. A core meltdown in certain configurations could turn one of these reactors into a bomb where you, literally, just add water to make it go off. Do not build these in flood prone areas or where there is lots of ground water.
I can see from looking at The project team [terrapower.com] some of the safety reccomendations for PWRs, such as putting the reactor underground, have been implemented and this is a step forward.
That said, the concept being used here is exactly the same as used for molten salt solar [earthbuddies.net] which has exactly the same capacity factor with none of the refueling issues.
The real remaining questions for the Terrapower technology is 1. How does it address the proliferation risks and 2. what is the waste stream being produced?
People are looking at the sodium coolant "Natrium" however the fuel technology appears to be the technology we have to scrutinise more carefully.
I hope that lends some more information to the discussion. I'll be keeping an eye on this as more information becomes available.
government funding? (Score:3)
Gates alone has plenty of money to build an initial reactor. I don't understand why we allow public funding and private profit.
Re: (Score:3)
What bad "engineering experience" are you blathering about? Russia, China, India and Japan are operating them with plans for more.
Exactly (Score:2)
Exactly. Nukes delay renewables a lot :
https://cleantechnica.com/2020... [cleantechnica.com]
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
They haven't set computing back a decade, so they've done better than Bill Gates
Re:Can we please stop hearing about the guy? (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine drinkypoo is using the acceptable application of the singular they when the gender of the person isn't known
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
and ugh, I hate the fact that I'm defending a user called drinkypoo, but they're not wrong.
Re:Can we please stop hearing about the guy? (Score:4, Informative)
and ugh, I hate the fact that I'm defending a user called drinkypoo, but they're not wrong.
My name has nothing to do with feces, but a lot of Slashdotters who are seemingly jealous of my ability to post a lot and still maintain excellent karma despite the kap and those who downmod me for things like expressing indictments of capitalism would very much like to promote that apparent association as a means of denigration.
The name is actually a reference to my late father. Never ceases to amaze me when people haven't heard of a "drinkypoo". Maybe they haven't had to deal so intimately with an alcoholic.
Re: (Score:3)
I, for one, am glad to see Bill Gates spending his money on big projects that normal 'capitalism' shies away from. Do you dislike Bill Gates so much that you cannot appreciate what he is trying to do?
Like all things, it's complicated.
What Gates is doing is great, for sure. But the fact that he can do it is a massive failing on society, which allowed him unchecked greed, and the ability to ruthlessly crush competition, abuse customers, and generally do all sorts of evil.
Gates is essentially trying to be robin hood, but instead of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor he stole from the poor and is now telling them about the awesome shit they're going to get because he has so much money he can do a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Okay then:
American Copy Editors Society
https://blog.ap.org/products-a... [ap.org]
Chicago Manual of Style
https://cmosshoptalk.com/2017/... [cmosshoptalk.com]
Merriam Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
Singular They isn't universally loved, but people who use it aren't wrong.
Re: (Score:3)
Their user name is hardly the only problem with them. They're frequently one of the most active commenters because they can't STFU
The user name for people like you, who comment anonymously and cowardly, is fucking spot on.
We all know you wouldn't let out one goddamned peep if you had to be held accountable for your comments.
You are the internet brave guy, except without the brave
Re: (Score:3)
Don't call him a loser, he hasn't made a crap program loader mislabeled as an operating system that has caused and spread most of the world's malware, causing tens of billions in damages and lost business. Bill Gates is like a shit nebula.
Re: (Score:3)
He brought that crap program loader and rebranded it, he didn't make it. He triggered a Cambrian explosion of malware causing endless harm to the world of computing. If only he was a halfway competent computer scientist instead of a scammer and business guy the state of computing would be 40 years ahead of where it is today.
"Shit nedula" doesn't cover it. He triggered the shit big bang creating space and at the same time filling it with super-hot shit plasma that eventually cooled into big globs of shit orb
Re: (Score:3)
He bought a very early version of DOS.
The nightmare that grew out of it is firmly on his own head.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
No it's not you.
It's a bad idea to place a nuke plant over a mine, because of ground shifts underneath.
It's a bad idea to place a nuke plant anywhere, in fact.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want less nuclear you need to be the change that drives it.
Re: Is it me? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
By 'coal plant' they meant a coal-fired power plant, not a mine. The reason for locating there is that all the infrastructure such as substations, high tension wires, road, and probably buildings.
Re: ridiculous (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They've had the commercial design ready for most of 15 years, wading through the piles of obstructions engineered to keep 50 year old GE technology as the only nuclear option.
Re: Idiot (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
He is not the opposite. He is a guy of regular intelligence who thinks he's much smarter than he is as a result of his success, which is in turn a result of having rich and connected parents who apparently raised him to be a ruthless scumbag who takes advantage of everyone he possibly can... which is how he succeeded in business. He presided over Microsoft at a time when it was found by the USDoJ to have abused its de facto monopoly position in basically every possible way; Bill Gates is a career criminal.
I
Re: (Score:2)
The world needs more of this type of idiot then.