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Did someone just post about my literal favorite thing? FUCK YES.
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Kirk Sorenson and LFTR’s dude.
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I heard nuclear reactors can last 100 years.
I hope they start developing thorium reactors soon
The should do those modular reactors to get economies of scale
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China completed their first smaller 2MW MSR in August 2021 and then got cleared to start it up last year.
I believe they are just doing small batch runs at the moment to see how to remove the fission products and understanding the safe start up and shut down of the reactor.
They have plans to build a way bigger one by 2030 if this first reactor works for them.
And @anon97809041 you’ll be stoked because the Chinese reactor is a small modular reactor.
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They have been using it on a batch basis for a while now. I can’t find any English articles on where they are at with processing the fission products and the regeneration loop for U-233.
People don’t want to admit that China is going to pass us in producing clean, abundant energy in the near future with these reactors while using our own technology that we developed.
It will be a sad day when we are left behind, because we didn’t want to advance the shit we paid to develop.
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A little off topic but my island floated the idea of a molten salt thermal solar power generator. I wish they had done it, some company was going to pay for everything and only wanted to sell power to our grid.
I think it was a great idea. I would have put some sort of heavy oil or at least diesel to augment the heating if there were low sun days for a while. Salt holds heat well.
If I could vote on building a new tech realtor here I would vote yes, but it would never happen.
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Big Island is one of the best places in the world for Oceanic Thermal Energy Converters (OTEC). You exploit the temperature differential between warm surface water and cold water from the bottom to drive a heat pump and spin a turbine.
The U of Hawaii - HIlo has (or had) a functional pilot plant that works and they don’t scale it up. Not sure if its a permitting, financing, or enviro thing that is stopping it.
It’s one of the best technologies that has very little ability to be argued against by greens and there’s only a handful of spots in the world where they can utilize it efficiently.
I talked to a bunch of people about it all the time when I was living there and I could never make sense of the policy.
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Being that we are in the middle of an ocean renewable energy is important to me. The difficulty with using ocean water for energy is the corrosive nature of the ocean. Even concrete and marine grade stainless steel disintegrates in salt water.
I’m for nukes. If they gave us 4th gen smr reactors I think this would solve our electricity problems. They could put the enriched fuel that last 30 years so we don’t have to mess with so much waste
Molten salt means liquid sodium. Liquid sodium has better heat transfer properties than water. On paper liquid sodium it great for making nuclear reactors, both at cooling the nuclear core and transferring the heat to the “water side” to make steam and drive the turbine.
While we’re at it, why not use graphite to make the core control rods out of? Graphite is less dense than steel and will inhibit the chain reaction less, extending the life of the fuel rods. Great ideas, right?
Except that when sodium contacts water it BLOWS UP! And when graphite starts to burn it becomes a class delta fire that is IMPOSSIBLE to extinguish.
As I understand it, this is EXACTLY what happened at Chern obyl. Lots of good ideas on paper, works perfectly right up until something goes wrong, and the things REALLY go wrong.
I typed a reply but I think I’m censored
What happened to the old board I just to love, where you could tell a chump to do die in a grease fire and no one batted an eye?
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“The Community” no longer tolerates that type of behavior.
The Community can suck a toot out a dog’s ass.
Wouldn’t let me say f a r t