Kairos Power has broken ground at Oak Ridge on the first officially approved Generation IV reactor ever in the US and the first non-light-water reactor in 50 years. It is being constructed alongside a non-nuclear demonstration unit that will help inform the design of the new reactor facility.
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On July 17, 2024, Kairos Power began construction at Oak Ridge, Tennessee on its Hernes low-power demonstration reactor. It won't be generating electricity for the grid. Instead, its function will be to develop Kairos's molten fluoride salt-cooled pebble-bed reactor, which is an inherently safe design that is capable of shutting itself down and keeping the reactor core safely cool in the event of an accident.
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According to the company, construction at Oak Ridge is only half the project. The reactor itself is of a modular design. These modules will be built and tested at a factory in Albuquerque, New Mexico before shipping to Tennessee.
Hermes is a pebble-bed reactor, where the nuclear fuel is encased in spherical pellets made of layers of enriched uranium, carbon, and ceramics. These TRi-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) particles are about the size of a poppyseed and act as tiny nuclear pressure vessels. These are formed into large, round pebbles about the size of a cobblestone. The pebbles are placed inside a reactor core that's more like a hopper in design. Fresh fuel goes in the top, the pebbles crowded together start and sustain the reaction, and spent fuel is collected at the bottom of the vessel.
Where similar reactors are cooled by helium gas, Hermes is cooled by molten fluoride salts circulating through the reactor. The salts maintain the reactor core at 1,085 °F (585 °C) as they carry off the heat to a heat exchanger. This secondary salt loop is connected to a steam generator that, in turn, runs a turbine.
Should the power to the reactor fail for whatever reason, the fuel pebbles automatically regulate the nuclear reaction by the laws of physics. As the reactor heats, fewer neutrons are available to sustain the reaction and it dies down. Within hours, the reactor reaches a point of stability. Meanwhile, molten salt flows through natural circulation, cooling the core. Even if the reactor temperature should spike, the fuel pebbles are extremely robust and won't degrade in any projected scenario.
All of this occurs at ordinary sea-level pressure, so no special containment structure or pressure vessel is required. The reactor is also made out of 316 stainless steel, which is highly resistant to salt corrosion.
Being developed with the help of a US$303-million Department of Energy grant, Hermes is expected to be completed by 2027.
I heard a statistic that at its height, the US was building 4 nuclear warheads per day. By 1990 it had produced around 70,000 nuclear warheads (not to mention the delivery systems for chemical and...
I heard a statistic that at its height, the US was building 4 nuclear warheads per day. By 1990 it had produced around 70,000 nuclear warheads (not to mention the delivery systems for chemical and biological weapons), although I'm not sure how many of those were stockpiled versus replacements for earlier warheads.
So we have the technology, capability, the money (sorta) to build out or nuclear power infrastructure. Let's do it. Let's support this and if we have to incentivize fossil fuel companies to marry into the programs so they can continue to make money off of joules and watts, then let's do that too. So long as we're actually planning for a long-term future and ween ourselves off of dead-end products. It's crazy it's taken this long to begin the process of adding to nuclear power generation in the US when it plateaued in the late 1980s.
Side note: There are a lot of environmentalists that would be very upset to see a post about nuclear energy categorized as "enviro." Whether they have a rational argument or not, I don't know. But in the future I wonder if this would better fit into science, since it's an advancement, or even engineering since it's a discipline.
Nuclear energy is properly green energy. Properly constructed projects like the one in the article are among the most eco-friendly ways to get huge energy output. Hydro dams are limited and...
Nuclear energy is properly green energy. Properly constructed projects like the one in the article are among the most eco-friendly ways to get huge energy output. Hydro dams are limited and obstruct waterways, wind and solar have siting issues and demand massive infrastructure to install and maintain, and require massive mining operations to provide minerals for the batteries that smooth out inconsistent output.
Nuclear energy gets a bad reputation because radiation is scary. However, we understand radiation very well and can mitigate it almost perfectly. Waste storage is a solved technology. The plants themselves pose no radiation risk. As detailed in the article, meltdowns are vanishingly unlikely. A typical coal plant outputs a great deal more atmospheric radiation than every operational nuclear power plant in the world, in addition to its more mundane harmful particulates and greenhouse gases.
I understand why people think nuclear energy is not a green tech, but the stance is quite simply obsolete in the current environment. This should remain in this category because obsolete views should not dictate anything whatsoever.
Really? It seems to be that there's a universal NIMBY sentiment about this (granted, it's not "technology"). Summoning @nukeman to know more about this.
Waste storage is a solved technology.
Really? It seems to be that there's a universal NIMBY sentiment about this (granted, it's not "technology").
Here is an excellent Kyle Hill video about it. I haven’t watched it in a while, so I can’t really remember the main points, but give it a watch. Edit: I just rewatched it. TL;DW a reactor makes...
Edit: I just rewatched it. TL;DW a reactor makes such an insanely small amount of waste that taking care of it properly is easy. The waste it produces is much safer than people realize. Near the beginning, he shows a picture that is what people think is a stereotypical nuclear waste spill: a rusted out steel drip with a circle of death around it. After talking for a bit, he captions the image to say it’s actually waste DDT, nothing nuclear about it. On top of all of that, fossil fuel power plants make an insanely high amount of waste that is not properly managed. And that waste is also radioactive. One coal power plant makes more radioactive waste in 1 hour than all nuclear power plants for the last 30 years.
There is a pithy anecdote in the comments section. The commenter was on a nuclear aircraft carrier with radioactive air detectors. The only time they read significant levels of airborne radioactivity was in port at Naples, Italy. They had an inversion layer that trapped all the exhaust from the local coal power plants.
The fuel is also a solid, not the glowing green whatever they imagine for some reason. The weight is also misleading. When people talk about a "ton of coal," the volume is something like a small...
The fuel is also a solid, not the glowing green whatever they imagine for some reason.
The weight is also misleading. When people talk about a "ton of coal," the volume is something like a small car. A ton of uranium is more like two cubic feet...and a power plant burns thousands of tons of coal per day, while fuel rods are infrequently changed in a nuclear reactor.
I was surprised to learn that in a year, all of the nuclear reactors in the US combine to make a volume of nuclear waste smaller that half of an Olympic sized swimming pool. Additionally, that...
I was surprised to learn that in a year, all of the nuclear reactors in the US combine to make a volume of nuclear waste smaller that half of an Olympic sized swimming pool. Additionally, that 'waste' fuel still contains over 90% of its potential energy.
This part doesn’t particularly surprise me, but only because my mental model of nuclear power is that it’s a very specific controlled environment, and therefore “spent fuel” is closer to “I’ve...
Additionally, that 'waste' fuel still contains over 90% of its potential energy.
This part doesn’t particularly surprise me, but only because my mental model of nuclear power is that it’s a very specific controlled environment, and therefore “spent fuel” is closer to “I’ve taken all the good bits, the rest is not useful”
That, and the sheer enormity of the energy density of nuclear fuels means that you can scrape off the top few easiest percentage points of energy and still be orders of magnitude ahead of any other conventional fuel. Relevant xkcd
Here in Washington State, there were nuclear reactors at the Hanford site, which were shut down about 50 years ago. The groundwater is STILL contaminated beyond safe limits. Yes, it's being...
Here in Washington State, there were nuclear reactors at the Hanford site, which were shut down about 50 years ago. The groundwater is STILL contaminated beyond safe limits. Yes, it's being cleaned up, but it's taking a long, long time.
So yes, nuclear waste is a significant problem. Until Hanford is properly cleaned up I cannot in good conscience support nuclear power.
Hanford was a material production site for nuclear weapons. The majority of the waste there is tank waste from poorly managed, older reprocessing of fuel and targets. It operated under a very...
Hanford was a material production site for nuclear weapons. The majority of the waste there is tank waste from poorly managed, older reprocessing of fuel and targets. It operated under a very different set of constraints (speed, focus on plutonium production) than that of commercial nuclear power. The waste streams of LWRs are far less complex versus those being vitrified at Hanford.
Fair enough. But given a fixed state budget, I'd rather money go towards fixing up Hanford than building new reactors, given how much clean energy Washington already has (we have more hydro than...
Fair enough. But given a fixed state budget, I'd rather money go towards fixing up Hanford than building new reactors, given how much clean energy Washington already has (we have more hydro than any other state - of course hydro has its own problems but it is green). Benefits in new reactor design don't help clean up the mess we created 50 years ago, and that's a higher priority IMO.
But I understand that this is a pretty localized argument, and modern advances in reactor safety are really promising.
Hanford Site Emphasis mine I don’t think it’s useful to point to issues stemming from one of the first nuclear reactors built sixty years ago and run with the priorities and incentives of a World...
Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the Hanford Engineer Works and B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world.
[…]
After sufficient plutonium had been produced, the production reactors were shut down between 1964 and 1971.
[…] Many early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate, resulting in the release of significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River, resulting in higher rates of cancer in the surrounding area.
Emphasis mine
I don’t think it’s useful to point to issues stemming from one of the first nuclear reactors built sixty years ago and run with the priorities and incentives of a World War as a reason to oppose nuclear power when we’ve now had over half a century of advancements in the field along with the design, waste management, and safety procedures of nuclear power generating reactors. And all of those advancements are in spite of the opposition and reduced funding; imagine how much farther we would be, and could still go, with full support.
Nuclear waste in the context of modern reactors is basically a solved problem. That is a separate issue than cleanup of nuclear waste from the flaws of early reactor designs.
Fair enough. But given a fixed state budget, I'd rather money go towards fixing up Hanford than building new reactors, given how much clean energy Washington already has (we have more hydro than...
Fair enough. But given a fixed state budget, I'd rather money go towards fixing up Hanford than building new reactors, given how much clean energy Washington already has (we have more hydro than any other state - of course hydro has its own problems but it is green). Benefits in new reactor design don't help clean up the mess we created 50 years ago, and that's a higher priority IMO.
But I understand that this is a pretty localized argument, and modern advances in reactor safety are really promising.
The same sentiment exists about wind and solar. For example: a decade ago, the town I grew up in voted to block a wind farm from being installed on someone's land. (A power company was going to...
The same sentiment exists about wind and solar. For example: a decade ago, the town I grew up in voted to block a wind farm from being installed on someone's land. (A power company was going to pay the land owner for its use.) The state, as a whole, has multiple times made a high voltage corridor a wedge issue and blocked it, leveraging:
Populist anger about transmission costs
NIMBYism about a narrow strip of land being altered
"Environmentalists" who think converting a narrow band of a massively forested space into mostly human-free meadow space (sorely lacking and beneficial to many kinds of wildlife) is the end of the world
Good old anti-people-from-other-states-benefiting-ism
We also have a nationwide lack of high voltage transmission, which is desperately needed for additional power generation and to move the power where it's most needed. There's a whole John Oliver video where he rants about that.
At some point, a functioning society must ignore the desires of the hoi polloi and make rational decisions that benefit the most people.
This is a really big issue in my area. No one in my region benefits from transmission lines proposed to run from one state, across multiple other states, to another. But that energy demand needs...
We also have a nationwide lack of high voltage transmission
This is a really big issue in my area. No one in my region benefits from transmission lines proposed to run from one state, across multiple other states, to another. But that energy demand needs to be met somehow and adjacent regions aren't building power plants to service their neighbors. NIMBYs in one region are arguing with local governments and other NIMBYs about who should bear this burden.
But what a lot of people aren't considering is that we need robust transmission networks across the country regardless of willingness to have it in their backyard or not. Ultimately someone has to take the hit, and maybe multiple someones, and that's just how some compromises have to be. There needs to be a level of redundancy of transmission lines, so that areas can be served without interruption, and that's only achieved by having more than strictly necessary. Power transmission is a national security issue, it's a quality of life issue, it's everything. Our society is built around the convenience of electricity and people would lose their minds without a lot of comforts delivered by high voltage lines.
I mean, there's a NIMBY sentiment about a lot of things. Waste storage isn't trivial, and you wouldn't want a disposal site in a residential area simply because it is an industrial development,...
I mean, there's a NIMBY sentiment about a lot of things. Waste storage isn't trivial, and you wouldn't want a disposal site in a residential area simply because it is an industrial development, but I'd argue that it would be less impactful overall than having a wind farm at similar proximity. The risks everyone would associate with waste disposal, like leakage into groundwater, are strenuously guarded against. The NIMBY factor is the sole unsolved component preventing robust solutions from being implemented, but that's a human factor rather than a technical one.
Late to the party, but in the video posted above (I believe – haven’t watched it in a while), the presenter also talks about a potential method of disposal which would literally work in a...
Late to the party, but in the video posted above (I believe – haven’t watched it in a while), the presenter also talks about a potential method of disposal which would literally work in a residential area.
This involves making thin tubes out of the concrete-waste mass and sending them into long, thin “pipe” like structures into the ground, where, shocker, this same process has been occurring naturally for hundreds of thousands of years, albeit of course not to the same extent everywhere on earth. And through observations, we know that it has a tendency to not move and just… stay there, in place, deep underground.
No cave-like structure to potentially collapse, no big “condensed” lump of radiation, no realistic way for retrieval of the (already non-weaponizable) waste after the holes have been sealed up.
Sounds next to ideal to me, to be frank.
(I am a layperson, this is only my best understanding, please do not hesitate to correct me if I mixed things up or got something completely wrong!)
The NIMBY factor is the sole unsolved component preventing robust solutions from being implemented
I agree with this sentiment, heavily. Public opinion did so much more harm than good in the case of nuclear power vs. climate change.
When leaded fuel was discovered as an issue and subsequently fixed by banning it, nobody argued for the end of automobile production. Instead, probably more research to improve cars was conducted than before, not less.
The technical aspects of nuclear waste disposal are largely considered solved: find old, hard rock in a remote place, bore down, emplace waste (whether fuel in containers, vitrified canisters, or...
The technical aspects of nuclear waste disposal are largely considered solved: find old, hard rock in a remote place, bore down, emplace waste (whether fuel in containers, vitrified canisters, or a combination), seal shut.
The sociopolitical aspects are still a problem. People don’t like the idea of one in their backyard, and there’s a lot of backlash when it is perceived as being rammed down your throats. This gives a bit of a historical overview of high-level radioactive waste management in the U.S. There were initially supposed to be two repositories in the U.S., but in 1987 Congress directed DOE to only study Yucca Mountain unless it was found to be unsuitable. Naturally, that affected the selection/design process some.
I can see why my comment led you down that route and that's my fault for making an off-handed comment without additional context. I get where you're coming from and agree that there are a number...
I can see why my comment led you down that route and that's my fault for making an off-handed comment without additional context. I get where you're coming from and agree that there are a number of solutions that either should be in place or could be put in place in the future with advancements outlined in the article or future tech. A lot of these are "common sense" even if they're not commonly accepted and it would've been nice if the article had reminded readers about some of those common misconceptions and why they are wrong. However the stance that, essentially, "nuclear waste has solutions therefore nuclear power is a settled issue" is the kind of perspective that comes off as dismissive or unaware of other valid ecological and human health concerns. That makes people reluctant to engage with a topic like this because it's clear simply from the source or the categorization of the post that the topic already has a certain tone and your post reiterates that tone. That was really my main concern, because this article in particular really doesn't touch at all on a number of issues of interest to environmentalists and I'll use this as a teaching opportunity to address that.
Hydroelectric power has a bigger impact on waterways and the surrounding ecosystems than most people realize, changing not just the health, but also what species are capable of inhabiting the area. Similarly, nuclear power reliant on water for emergency waste heat and as a secondary/tertiary method of cooling has an impact on the environment even though nuclear power plant emissions are typically just H2O. Nuclear plants are typically built in areas with a large source of water for cooling and for energy generation (steam + turbines = electricity) and in areas where that water isn't recaptured for use in the power plant, it's released back into a moving body of water. That water is not contaminated with radiation (Fukushima's water releases are radioactive due to the accident, not by design). But that water is warmer than ambient temperature and causes changes to the health of ecosystems downstream, including in preventing fish from successfully reproducing or changing the incubation temperature of turtle and frog eggs, which directly influences the gender of the offspring (which, in another context, a certain radio host incorrectly framed as "turning the frogs gay"). That has a runaway effect on gender balance and therefore long-term population growth, which then has its own impact on biodiversity on surrounding plants and animals.
The damage to the environment from mining, and often times a substantial lack of regulation of uranium mining in Africa, is another valid concern. That's not what this article is about, so it doesn't speak to where America's uranium comes from - a lot of nuclear fuel in the US may be mined in the US and therefore is better regulated and might have less environmental impact than mining in Niger or central Africa. That's fine, but again, the article isn't about the environment and doesn't address issues environmentalists are concerned with.
I get that a lot of people have unfounded fears of nuclear radiation. For instance, a lot of people have negative associations with microwave ovens, because they incorrectly relate it to nuclear radiation or something like that. But there are valid questions people should have about reactor design and the article doesn't really talk about the pros of Gen IV reactors, specifically the Molsten Salt Reactor variety, and in terms that people can understand. MSR's primary cooling can be done passively and doesn't require active cooling (Fukushima's nuclear plant). I think that would've been helpful information to include because it is relevant to the NIMBY concerns moreso than solely environmentalists and no one wants a repeat of Fukushima. Wikipedia explains that "MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors..." and that "[t]his eliminates the risk of hydrogen explosions (as in the Fukushima nuclear disaster)." So that's answered. The article does touch on safety twice, specifically talking about power loss to the plant, which were problems facing the plants in Fukushima and more recently in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia. But again the article doesn't talk about water consumption for secondary cooling or use with turbines or how that decreased consumption might benefit the environment (whether there were an accident or not).
If there are solutions that can be implemented to safely store inert nuclear waste then I think it's valid that people have concerns about the long-term impacts of existing radioactive waste still being created. Right now waste disposal is still mostly about long-term storage, rather than recycling or reduction that of nuclear waste over time and one of the comments points out that fuel recycling, something that's possible and the design of MSRs would probably allow, isn't even mentioned in the article. And that's fine because it can't have everything, but again it's not addressing the environmental solutions, and solution to NIMBY concerns, that Gen IV/MSR reactors might provide. Additionally, refueling (with fresh fuel) can be its own set of risks, so to answer the NIMBY concerns about that, according to Wikipedia, "MSRs can be refueled while operating (essentially online-nuclear reprocessing) while conventional reactors shut down for refueling." Additionally, "Discharged wastes [from MSRs] are mostly fission products with shorter half-lives. This can reduce the needed containment to 300 years versus the tens of thousands of years needed by light-water reactor spent fuel." All of that information would be of interest to a lot of people, and I think would've rounded out the article better, but again the article isn't really about the environment.
While I don't know if nuclear waste storage has advanced enough to be worthwhile to clean up old Superfund sites, especially ones where military bases are built and house a lot of people, to say nothing of failures to adequately respond to the impact of toxic and radioactive waste storage on minority communities or spills on Native American land. The article didn't touch on any health benefits that Gen IV reactors might have. Authorities have a history of being slow to act on solving this, so even if there are solutions, this article wasn't about them and I feel like the relationship of this topic to the environment is further afield than some people might realize (and to my casual remark in the GP, that upsets environmentalists).
So I guess what I'm getting at is that if this articles is filed under "energy" by its website, and it doesn't really touch on the environment that much even though I'd like nuclear power to be a silver-bullet solution to humanity's energy needs, then maybe we can reconsider where posts like this go. If people get more out of an article like this because it's more about science or engineering or just ~news, then I kinda think it should go there. But I'm glad to have this topic brought up so that people aren't equating all environmentalists with people fearmongering over radioactive mushroom clouds.
Wind and solar have mining requirements, no argument there. But so does nuclear. Despite the high power output from a small amount of fuel, that fuel still has to be mined, refined, and enriched...
wind and solar have siting issues and demand massive infrastructure to install and maintain, and require massive mining operations to provide minerals for the batteries that smooth out inconsistent output.
Wind and solar have mining requirements, no argument there. But so does nuclear. Despite the high power output from a small amount of fuel, that fuel still has to be mined, refined, and enriched which are all carbon and energy intense processes at present. It also takes 6-10 times as long to build out a nuclear site than to build out equivalent wind and solar. Certainly the footprint for each is different, but reactors are painfully slow to get online.
Last I looked the construction and fuel mining requirements puts nuclear on par with wind and solar for the estimated life cycle carbon emissions per watt. They're very different power generating technologies and I'm not discounting the arguments for nuclear as baseload. However, I think it's important to put the drawbacks of nuclear along side those of wind and solar for fair comparison. I see nuclear get painted as a much easier solution to our grid challenges than I think it is.
You have to assess the functional lifetime of those solutions as well. Solar and particularly wind have functional lifetimes that are significantly less than the nuclear plant, so it's less than...
You have to assess the functional lifetime of those solutions as well. Solar and particularly wind have functional lifetimes that are significantly less than the nuclear plant, so it's less than there is an unbalanced setup time and more that nuclear is just a longer-lifecycle product that takes more time to set up and stays active for much longer. Wind turbines are active for more or less twenty years, and solar for a bit longer than that depending on conditions. Modern nuclear plants can run for a lot longer - long enough that the limits are still speculative, but we're talking about 80 years plus at this point.
When interest rates are high, a longer lifetime isn’t much of a financial advantage, because investments need to pay for themselves faster. (The “discount rate” for future earnings is higher.)...
When interest rates are high, a longer lifetime isn’t much of a financial advantage, because investments need to pay for themselves faster. (The “discount rate” for future earnings is higher.)
Also, the further you go out, the more uncertain the market for electricity is. US electricity utilities have been burned before with long-term investments that become “stranded costs” that still need to be paid for even though they’re not needed. (And specifically, they bet big on nuclear power!)
More generally, if you build something that can last 80 years and it the technology is obsolete in 15 years, the extra lifespan doesn’t help at all. By the time solar panels need replacing, there will be better ones.
In the short term, if data centers continue to increase the demand for electricity, it could be a rosy future for electricity generators, but I would be hesitant predicting what’s going to happen even two years out - that’s a risky, currently unprofitable bet and AI companies might not get the paying customers that they are hoping for.
I hope it works out, but It doesn’t really follow that, because the US built a lot of warheads, we will also churn out a lot of nuclear power plants. They’re very different things. Even if it...
I hope it works out, but It doesn’t really follow that, because the US built a lot of warheads, we will also churn out a lot of nuclear power plants. They’re very different things.
Even if it could be done, I think it’s doubtful whether it will be cost-effective. Electricity generation is a difficult, very competitive market. As long as interest rates remain relatively high, the cheaper technology (in terms of capital costs) that pays for itself more quickly has an edge. Modular reactors will help, but will it bring costs down enough?
Solar is already dirt cheap and getting cheaper. The current bottleneck isn’t the cost of the solar panels or land, but getting a grid connection - there are multi-year waits. Solar has limitations, but batteries are also getting cheaper pretty quickly. So, nuclear power might miss the window where it could be cost-competitive. It’s already the case that they won’t be able to make money on most days when the sun is shining, and that’s going to become a larger part of the day as more battery power goes online.
Oh no! Can't wait for several years of bad faith arguments against nuclear... rereads title Oh, thank goodness! Because radiation is big and scary, people always focus on the times Nuclear failed,...
First officially approved Gen IV nuclear reactor in the US breaks down
Oh no! Can't wait for several years of bad faith arguments against nuclear... rereads title
First officially approved Gen IV nuclear reactor in the US breaks ground
Oh, thank goodness!
Because radiation is big and scary, people always focus on the times Nuclear failed, instead of the times any other power source has failed. And only a few people seem to understand that coal plants also create radiation. It makes it really frustrating to hear about any failures, because Nuclear does not need more setbacks.
It's funny that in the end, for how complex all these things are, the actual electricity being generated happens in a turbine. What are other sources of electricity that are not generated through...
It's funny that in the end, for how complex all these things are, the actual electricity being generated happens in a turbine. What are other sources of electricity that are not generated through a turbine?
From the article:
…
…
it's so cool how the meltdown failure condition both automatically regulates and continues to capture usable power, it's so extra and I love it
Humanity is so incredibly cool.
Sounds great. I’ll take 100.
I heard a statistic that at its height, the US was building 4 nuclear warheads per day. By 1990 it had produced around 70,000 nuclear warheads (not to mention the delivery systems for chemical and biological weapons), although I'm not sure how many of those were stockpiled versus replacements for earlier warheads.
So we have the technology, capability, the money (sorta) to build out or nuclear power infrastructure. Let's do it. Let's support this and if we have to incentivize fossil fuel companies to marry into the programs so they can continue to make money off of joules and watts, then let's do that too. So long as we're actually planning for a long-term future and ween ourselves off of dead-end products. It's crazy it's taken this long to begin the process of adding to nuclear power generation in the US when it plateaued in the late 1980s.
Side note: There are a lot of environmentalists that would be very upset to see a post about nuclear energy categorized as "enviro." Whether they have a rational argument or not, I don't know. But in the future I wonder if this would better fit into science, since it's an advancement, or even engineering since it's a discipline.
Nuclear energy is properly green energy. Properly constructed projects like the one in the article are among the most eco-friendly ways to get huge energy output. Hydro dams are limited and obstruct waterways, wind and solar have siting issues and demand massive infrastructure to install and maintain, and require massive mining operations to provide minerals for the batteries that smooth out inconsistent output.
Nuclear energy gets a bad reputation because radiation is scary. However, we understand radiation very well and can mitigate it almost perfectly. Waste storage is a solved technology. The plants themselves pose no radiation risk. As detailed in the article, meltdowns are vanishingly unlikely. A typical coal plant outputs a great deal more atmospheric radiation than every operational nuclear power plant in the world, in addition to its more mundane harmful particulates and greenhouse gases.
I understand why people think nuclear energy is not a green tech, but the stance is quite simply obsolete in the current environment. This should remain in this category because obsolete views should not dictate anything whatsoever.
Really? It seems to be that there's a universal NIMBY sentiment about this (granted, it's not "technology").
Summoning @nukeman to know more about this.
Here is an excellent Kyle Hill video about it. I haven’t watched it in a while, so I can’t really remember the main points, but give it a watch.
Edit: I just rewatched it. TL;DW a reactor makes such an insanely small amount of waste that taking care of it properly is easy. The waste it produces is much safer than people realize. Near the beginning, he shows a picture that is what people think is a stereotypical nuclear waste spill: a rusted out steel drip with a circle of death around it. After talking for a bit, he captions the image to say it’s actually waste DDT, nothing nuclear about it. On top of all of that, fossil fuel power plants make an insanely high amount of waste that is not properly managed. And that waste is also radioactive. One coal power plant makes more radioactive waste in 1 hour than all nuclear power plants for the last 30 years.
There is a pithy anecdote in the comments section. The commenter was on a nuclear aircraft carrier with radioactive air detectors. The only time they read significant levels of airborne radioactivity was in port at Naples, Italy. They had an inversion layer that trapped all the exhaust from the local coal power plants.
The fuel is also a solid, not the glowing green whatever they imagine for some reason.
The weight is also misleading. When people talk about a "ton of coal," the volume is something like a small car. A ton of uranium is more like two cubic feet...and a power plant burns thousands of tons of coal per day, while fuel rods are infrequently changed in a nuclear reactor.
I was surprised to learn that in a year, all of the nuclear reactors in the US combine to make a volume of nuclear waste smaller that half of an Olympic sized swimming pool. Additionally, that 'waste' fuel still contains over 90% of its potential energy.
This part doesn’t particularly surprise me, but only because my mental model of nuclear power is that it’s a very specific controlled environment, and therefore “spent fuel” is closer to “I’ve taken all the good bits, the rest is not useful”
That, and the sheer enormity of the energy density of nuclear fuels means that you can scrape off the top few easiest percentage points of energy and still be orders of magnitude ahead of any other conventional fuel. Relevant xkcd
Here in Washington State, there were nuclear reactors at the Hanford site, which were shut down about 50 years ago. The groundwater is STILL contaminated beyond safe limits. Yes, it's being cleaned up, but it's taking a long, long time.
So yes, nuclear waste is a significant problem. Until Hanford is properly cleaned up I cannot in good conscience support nuclear power.
Hanford was a material production site for nuclear weapons. The majority of the waste there is tank waste from poorly managed, older reprocessing of fuel and targets. It operated under a very different set of constraints (speed, focus on plutonium production) than that of commercial nuclear power. The waste streams of LWRs are far less complex versus those being vitrified at Hanford.
Fair enough. But given a fixed state budget, I'd rather money go towards fixing up Hanford than building new reactors, given how much clean energy Washington already has (we have more hydro than any other state - of course hydro has its own problems but it is green). Benefits in new reactor design don't help clean up the mess we created 50 years ago, and that's a higher priority IMO.
But I understand that this is a pretty localized argument, and modern advances in reactor safety are really promising.
Hanford Site
Emphasis mine
I don’t think it’s useful to point to issues stemming from one of the first nuclear reactors built sixty years ago and run with the priorities and incentives of a World War as a reason to oppose nuclear power when we’ve now had over half a century of advancements in the field along with the design, waste management, and safety procedures of nuclear power generating reactors. And all of those advancements are in spite of the opposition and reduced funding; imagine how much farther we would be, and could still go, with full support.
Nuclear waste in the context of modern reactors is basically a solved problem. That is a separate issue than cleanup of nuclear waste from the flaws of early reactor designs.
Fair enough. But given a fixed state budget, I'd rather money go towards fixing up Hanford than building new reactors, given how much clean energy Washington already has (we have more hydro than any other state - of course hydro has its own problems but it is green). Benefits in new reactor design don't help clean up the mess we created 50 years ago, and that's a higher priority IMO.
But I understand that this is a pretty localized argument, and modern advances in reactor safety are really promising.
The same sentiment exists about wind and solar. For example: a decade ago, the town I grew up in voted to block a wind farm from being installed on someone's land. (A power company was going to pay the land owner for its use.) The state, as a whole, has multiple times made a high voltage corridor a wedge issue and blocked it, leveraging:
Populist anger about transmission costs
NIMBYism about a narrow strip of land being altered
"Environmentalists" who think converting a narrow band of a massively forested space into mostly human-free meadow space (sorely lacking and beneficial to many kinds of wildlife) is the end of the world
Good old anti-people-from-other-states-benefiting-ism
We also have a nationwide lack of high voltage transmission, which is desperately needed for additional power generation and to move the power where it's most needed. There's a whole John Oliver video where he rants about that.
At some point, a functioning society must ignore the desires of the hoi polloi and make rational decisions that benefit the most people.
This is a really big issue in my area. No one in my region benefits from transmission lines proposed to run from one state, across multiple other states, to another. But that energy demand needs to be met somehow and adjacent regions aren't building power plants to service their neighbors. NIMBYs in one region are arguing with local governments and other NIMBYs about who should bear this burden.
But what a lot of people aren't considering is that we need robust transmission networks across the country regardless of willingness to have it in their backyard or not. Ultimately someone has to take the hit, and maybe multiple someones, and that's just how some compromises have to be. There needs to be a level of redundancy of transmission lines, so that areas can be served without interruption, and that's only achieved by having more than strictly necessary. Power transmission is a national security issue, it's a quality of life issue, it's everything. Our society is built around the convenience of electricity and people would lose their minds without a lot of comforts delivered by high voltage lines.
I mean, there's a NIMBY sentiment about a lot of things. Waste storage isn't trivial, and you wouldn't want a disposal site in a residential area simply because it is an industrial development, but I'd argue that it would be less impactful overall than having a wind farm at similar proximity. The risks everyone would associate with waste disposal, like leakage into groundwater, are strenuously guarded against. The NIMBY factor is the sole unsolved component preventing robust solutions from being implemented, but that's a human factor rather than a technical one.
Late to the party, but in the video posted above (I believe – haven’t watched it in a while), the presenter also talks about a potential method of disposal which would literally work in a residential area.
This involves making thin tubes out of the concrete-waste mass and sending them into long, thin “pipe” like structures into the ground, where, shocker, this same process has been occurring naturally for hundreds of thousands of years, albeit of course not to the same extent everywhere on earth. And through observations, we know that it has a tendency to not move and just… stay there, in place, deep underground.
No cave-like structure to potentially collapse, no big “condensed” lump of radiation, no realistic way for retrieval of the (already non-weaponizable) waste after the holes have been sealed up.
Sounds next to ideal to me, to be frank.
(I am a layperson, this is only my best understanding, please do not hesitate to correct me if I mixed things up or got something completely wrong!)
I agree with this sentiment, heavily. Public opinion did so much more harm than good in the case of nuclear power vs. climate change.
When leaded fuel was discovered as an issue and subsequently fixed by banning it, nobody argued for the end of automobile production. Instead, probably more research to improve cars was conducted than before, not less.
The technical aspects of nuclear waste disposal are largely considered solved: find old, hard rock in a remote place, bore down, emplace waste (whether fuel in containers, vitrified canisters, or a combination), seal shut.
The sociopolitical aspects are still a problem. People don’t like the idea of one in their backyard, and there’s a lot of backlash when it is perceived as being rammed down your throats. This gives a bit of a historical overview of high-level radioactive waste management in the U.S. There were initially supposed to be two repositories in the U.S., but in 1987 Congress directed DOE to only study Yucca Mountain unless it was found to be unsuitable. Naturally, that affected the selection/design process some.
I can see why my comment led you down that route and that's my fault for making an off-handed comment without additional context. I get where you're coming from and agree that there are a number of solutions that either should be in place or could be put in place in the future with advancements outlined in the article or future tech. A lot of these are "common sense" even if they're not commonly accepted and it would've been nice if the article had reminded readers about some of those common misconceptions and why they are wrong. However the stance that, essentially, "nuclear waste has solutions therefore nuclear power is a settled issue" is the kind of perspective that comes off as dismissive or unaware of other valid ecological and human health concerns. That makes people reluctant to engage with a topic like this because it's clear simply from the source or the categorization of the post that the topic already has a certain tone and your post reiterates that tone. That was really my main concern, because this article in particular really doesn't touch at all on a number of issues of interest to environmentalists and I'll use this as a teaching opportunity to address that.
Hydroelectric power has a bigger impact on waterways and the surrounding ecosystems than most people realize, changing not just the health, but also what species are capable of inhabiting the area. Similarly, nuclear power reliant on water for emergency waste heat and as a secondary/tertiary method of cooling has an impact on the environment even though nuclear power plant emissions are typically just H2O. Nuclear plants are typically built in areas with a large source of water for cooling and for energy generation (steam + turbines = electricity) and in areas where that water isn't recaptured for use in the power plant, it's released back into a moving body of water. That water is not contaminated with radiation (Fukushima's water releases are radioactive due to the accident, not by design). But that water is warmer than ambient temperature and causes changes to the health of ecosystems downstream, including in preventing fish from successfully reproducing or changing the incubation temperature of turtle and frog eggs, which directly influences the gender of the offspring (which, in another context, a certain radio host incorrectly framed as "turning the frogs gay"). That has a runaway effect on gender balance and therefore long-term population growth, which then has its own impact on biodiversity on surrounding plants and animals.
The damage to the environment from mining, and often times a substantial lack of regulation of uranium mining in Africa, is another valid concern. That's not what this article is about, so it doesn't speak to where America's uranium comes from - a lot of nuclear fuel in the US may be mined in the US and therefore is better regulated and might have less environmental impact than mining in Niger or central Africa. That's fine, but again, the article isn't about the environment and doesn't address issues environmentalists are concerned with.
I get that a lot of people have unfounded fears of nuclear radiation. For instance, a lot of people have negative associations with microwave ovens, because they incorrectly relate it to nuclear radiation or something like that. But there are valid questions people should have about reactor design and the article doesn't really talk about the pros of Gen IV reactors, specifically the Molsten Salt Reactor variety, and in terms that people can understand. MSR's primary cooling can be done passively and doesn't require active cooling (Fukushima's nuclear plant). I think that would've been helpful information to include because it is relevant to the NIMBY concerns moreso than solely environmentalists and no one wants a repeat of Fukushima. Wikipedia explains that "MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors..." and that "[t]his eliminates the risk of hydrogen explosions (as in the Fukushima nuclear disaster)." So that's answered. The article does touch on safety twice, specifically talking about power loss to the plant, which were problems facing the plants in Fukushima and more recently in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia. But again the article doesn't talk about water consumption for secondary cooling or use with turbines or how that decreased consumption might benefit the environment (whether there were an accident or not).
If there are solutions that can be implemented to safely store inert nuclear waste then I think it's valid that people have concerns about the long-term impacts of existing radioactive waste still being created. Right now waste disposal is still mostly about long-term storage, rather than recycling or reduction that of nuclear waste over time and one of the comments points out that fuel recycling, something that's possible and the design of MSRs would probably allow, isn't even mentioned in the article. And that's fine because it can't have everything, but again it's not addressing the environmental solutions, and solution to NIMBY concerns, that Gen IV/MSR reactors might provide. Additionally, refueling (with fresh fuel) can be its own set of risks, so to answer the NIMBY concerns about that, according to Wikipedia, "MSRs can be refueled while operating (essentially online-nuclear reprocessing) while conventional reactors shut down for refueling." Additionally, "Discharged wastes [from MSRs] are mostly fission products with shorter half-lives. This can reduce the needed containment to 300 years versus the tens of thousands of years needed by light-water reactor spent fuel." All of that information would be of interest to a lot of people, and I think would've rounded out the article better, but again the article isn't really about the environment.
While I don't know if nuclear waste storage has advanced enough to be worthwhile to clean up old Superfund sites, especially ones where military bases are built and house a lot of people, to say nothing of failures to adequately respond to the impact of toxic and radioactive waste storage on minority communities or spills on Native American land. The article didn't touch on any health benefits that Gen IV reactors might have. Authorities have a history of being slow to act on solving this, so even if there are solutions, this article wasn't about them and I feel like the relationship of this topic to the environment is further afield than some people might realize (and to my casual remark in the GP, that upsets environmentalists).
So I guess what I'm getting at is that if this articles is filed under "energy" by its website, and it doesn't really touch on the environment that much even though I'd like nuclear power to be a silver-bullet solution to humanity's energy needs, then maybe we can reconsider where posts like this go. If people get more out of an article like this because it's more about science or engineering or just ~news, then I kinda think it should go there. But I'm glad to have this topic brought up so that people aren't equating all environmentalists with people fearmongering over radioactive mushroom clouds.
Wind and solar have mining requirements, no argument there. But so does nuclear. Despite the high power output from a small amount of fuel, that fuel still has to be mined, refined, and enriched which are all carbon and energy intense processes at present. It also takes 6-10 times as long to build out a nuclear site than to build out equivalent wind and solar. Certainly the footprint for each is different, but reactors are painfully slow to get online.
Last I looked the construction and fuel mining requirements puts nuclear on par with wind and solar for the estimated life cycle carbon emissions per watt. They're very different power generating technologies and I'm not discounting the arguments for nuclear as baseload. However, I think it's important to put the drawbacks of nuclear along side those of wind and solar for fair comparison. I see nuclear get painted as a much easier solution to our grid challenges than I think it is.
You have to assess the functional lifetime of those solutions as well. Solar and particularly wind have functional lifetimes that are significantly less than the nuclear plant, so it's less than there is an unbalanced setup time and more that nuclear is just a longer-lifecycle product that takes more time to set up and stays active for much longer. Wind turbines are active for more or less twenty years, and solar for a bit longer than that depending on conditions. Modern nuclear plants can run for a lot longer - long enough that the limits are still speculative, but we're talking about 80 years plus at this point.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/04/04/1090630/old-nuclear-plants/
When interest rates are high, a longer lifetime isn’t much of a financial advantage, because investments need to pay for themselves faster. (The “discount rate” for future earnings is higher.)
Also, the further you go out, the more uncertain the market for electricity is. US electricity utilities have been burned before with long-term investments that become “stranded costs” that still need to be paid for even though they’re not needed. (And specifically, they bet big on nuclear power!)
More generally, if you build something that can last 80 years and it the technology is obsolete in 15 years, the extra lifespan doesn’t help at all. By the time solar panels need replacing, there will be better ones.
In the short term, if data centers continue to increase the demand for electricity, it could be a rosy future for electricity generators, but I would be hesitant predicting what’s going to happen even two years out - that’s a risky, currently unprofitable bet and AI companies might not get the paying customers that they are hoping for.
I hope it works out, but It doesn’t really follow that, because the US built a lot of warheads, we will also churn out a lot of nuclear power plants. They’re very different things.
Even if it could be done, I think it’s doubtful whether it will be cost-effective. Electricity generation is a difficult, very competitive market. As long as interest rates remain relatively high, the cheaper technology (in terms of capital costs) that pays for itself more quickly has an edge. Modular reactors will help, but will it bring costs down enough?
Solar is already dirt cheap and getting cheaper. The current bottleneck isn’t the cost of the solar panels or land, but getting a grid connection - there are multi-year waits. Solar has limitations, but batteries are also getting cheaper pretty quickly. So, nuclear power might miss the window where it could be cost-competitive. It’s already the case that they won’t be able to make money on most days when the sun is shining, and that’s going to become a larger part of the day as more battery power goes online.
Oh no! Can't wait for several years of bad faith arguments against nuclear...
rereads title
Oh, thank goodness!
Because radiation is big and scary, people always focus on the times Nuclear failed, instead of the times any other power source has failed. And only a few people seem to understand that coal plants also create radiation. It makes it really frustrating to hear about any failures, because Nuclear does not need more setbacks.
It's funny that in the end, for how complex all these things are, the actual electricity being generated happens in a turbine. What are other sources of electricity that are not generated through a turbine?
We can squeeze some things for smaller amounts of electricity
Solar.
Yeah, I thought of that as well after I posted my comment haha.
Ok so, we have solar, turbine, and piezoelectricity.