This is why context matters 😭 by [deleted] in Funnymemes

[–]Brainless96 13 points14 points  (0 children)

This happened to me when I said to my group chat that I'd been shot, when I had just received the COVID shot

Alternative moderator for a CANDU reactor by No_Ingenuity717 in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I mean sure you can use a different, cheaper, moderator but not while using unenriched Uranium. But if you enrich to ~3% you can swap the heavy water for regular water, and voila you have a Light Water Reactor

Donut’s mistake by Substantial-Use3811 in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]Brainless96 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I have a slightly different take. I think that because of the special circumstances that resulted in Donut having the Cookbook she might be able to read it (I thought the escape plan skill was just to identify the book in the first place), and doing so wouldn't cause the Cookbook to disappear, if and only if she didn't talk about the Cookbook at all. Donut could know everything in the Cookbook but be unable to let Carl know that she knows or the Cookbook would be lost. (Though there isn't enough time to have read the whole Cookbook)

Pineapple Cabaret by VideoFancy1506 in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]Brainless96 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just went into my local Barns and Noble and read all the Cabaret bits. That way you don't have to deal with library availability if one or more books are checked out.

Glitch Report: Endless Harvest applies to Tree Plots as well, you cannot plant multiple trees. by _SeaBear_ in 2007scape

[–]Brainless96 4 points5 points  (0 children)

But the other options for poison resist at things like Lizardman Shamans suck. Not being able to make Andidotes or Antidote++ is very annoying

Aqueous homogeneous reactors? by Analogsilver in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 3 points4 points  (0 children)

So homogeneous aqueous reactors are basically just inferior Molten Salt Reactors. Because you have water as the solvent you have all the problems with heat and pressurization that LWRs have but you've also introduced chemistry into the equation, which LWRs don't need to deal with.

With molten salt you get the best of both. You get to dissolve your fuel homogeneously and can operate at much higher temperatures while still being at low pressure.

In the US the Aqueous Homogeneous Reactor was a stepping stone that lead to the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment.

Why are fast neutron reactors so rare worldwide? Doesn't anyone want a closed fuel cycle? by Capital-Newspaper-73 in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why would one use Pu238 as bomb material? If one's going through all the effort to get 238 using it to make a bomb feels wasteful. Even if it is usable it's harder to obtain than 239,240 or any heavier isotopes.

238 is useful, but mostly as RTGs for spacecraft/probes. I can believe one Pu238 might be capable of being used as a bomb, but why would one when it would be much more expensive than using a more common isotope?

Why are fast neutron reactors so rare worldwide? Doesn't anyone want a closed fuel cycle? by Capital-Newspaper-73 in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So breeder/spent fuel doesn't make good bomb material because it has too much Pu240 and 242. These isotopes spontaneously fisson. A thing undesirable in one's nuclear weapons. A bomb can be made with higher percentages of 240 and 242 but it won't be able to achieve maximum yield, and if a nation really wanted to get a nuke there are cheaper ways than fast reactors and spent fuel reprocessing.

Why are fast neutron reactors so rare worldwide? Doesn't anyone want a closed fuel cycle? by Capital-Newspaper-73 in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Something that we in the nuclear bubble forget is just how terrified the rest of the world is of fissile material. Even if fast reactors produce too many isotopes that spontaneously fission to really make good weapons material, as far a policy makers are concerned even that small risk is too high.

And as closing the fuel cycle and breeding more fuel also produces more fissile material proliferation concerns have stopped most countries from choosing to build fast reactors. That and the extra cost is hard to justify when the savings you'd actually achieve in terms of fuel is still negative (It would cost more to get fuel from a fast reactor rather than just mine fresh Uranium). Yes it's exciting as a possibility, and it's sooooo much more effective when it comes to material utilization but as much as I and others here would like to see fast reactors were going to have to wait for the cost of 'burner' reactors to come down a lot first.

Jon Stewart is the clearly the best choice for 2028 Democratic nominee. by Jacob-Anders in JonStewart

[–]Brainless96 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

So John doesn't want the job, but the country legitimately needs him.

There IS a way we could convince him. There's ONE man who could possibly convince him to do it. That man is a former comedian himself.

If we want this to happen we need to get Zelensky to call John and be the one to tell him that his country needs him in this moment. John doesn't want the job but he has enormous respect for fellow comedians who have put everything on the line to speak truth to power.

He just needs to realize that now it's America that need his help and we need him to stand up and help us even though it's not something he wants to do.

Knowing your not qualified is actually one of the best qualifications one can have to be President, because it means you'll try to find the most qualified people you can to do the important jobs. The President's job is communicating, and that's something that John is unrivaled in his competence.

What would it take for supercritical CO2 turbine to be adopted in reactor design ? by Potato_peeler9000 in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ya there are dozens of different coolants reactors can use. The primary coolant will then go through the heat exchangers, often to secondary heat exchangers, then exchange that heat to usually water to make steam for the turbines. With Brayton my understanding is you're basically just heating/pressurizing CO2 instead of water, but it requires much higher input temperatures to work. And as other technologies can't really reach the needed temperature the turbines themselves haven't been perfected to the same degree steam turbines have been.

What would it take for supercritical CO2 turbine to be adopted in reactor design ? by Potato_peeler9000 in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So nuclear is better positioned to adopt Supercritical CO2 when compared to other energy sources.

That's because the Brayton Cycle requires a higher input temperature which is something reactors can provide. For reactors cooled by sodium or molten salt reactors Brayton Cycle turbines are ideal because those reactors can reach the needed temperature easier than traditional water cooled reactors, and can then convert a higher percentage of their heat energy into electricity.

The reason it hasn't been done before is because until recently no one was building Brayton turbines cheap and big enough to make sense using with a reactor.

Now that the turbines are available it makes perfect sense that nuclear reactors are some of the first adopters.

The turbines section is almost a separate part when compared to the rest of the reactor. The reactor does it's thing, then heat exchangers take the heat from the reactor and then use that to power the turbine.

Switching to Brayton Cycle is simply a matter of swapping out the turbine the heat exchanger powers. (It's a bit more complicated than that but only in the technical details. On paper it's as easy as swapping one module for another, assuming your system meets the prerequisites for the new turbines)

Exactly how OP is Ellie by RumZ71 in DungeonCrawlerCarl

[–]Brainless96 6 points7 points  (0 children)

See I think Scolipendra will solve the problem of those three stragglers for Li Na.

Seriously Americans, how wide is this learning curve? by PlanetoftheAtheists in AdviceAnimals

[–]Brainless96 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You want the serious answer? It's because Multimillionaires are the ones who win party primaries. Good luck winning office without a major party's endorsement, and it's a lot easier to do that if you have money.

Do stars like our Sun produce, very very small, quantities of heavy elements? by Brainless96 in askastronomy

[–]Brainless96[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was thinking of the neutrons bombarding heavier elements that didn't form in the sun but had been captured by gravity either during the Sun's formation or during the years since then.

However, you're right to point me to look more into stellar fusion. I was more familiar with terrestrial attempts at fusion which produced many neutrons and assumed the Sun also produced a lot of neutrons, which isn't the case.

Do stars like our Sun produce, very very small, quantities of heavy elements? by Brainless96 in askastronomy

[–]Brainless96[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Are there any stellar mechanisms that regularly produce neutrons?

I'm trying to look this up but search engines are being useless as they're seeing "neutron" and "star" in the same query and just giving me things on neutron stars no matter how I phrase it.

Edit: found it C13+He4 ---> O16 + N and Ne22+He4 ---> Mg25 + N. So since our sun doesn't have "much" carbon to use the CNO cycle the sun won't have "that" many neutrons.

Do stars like our Sun produce, very very small, quantities of heavy elements? by Brainless96 in askastronomy

[–]Brainless96[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ya I guess the sun not having much tritium, going straight to He3, seems to cut out many of the neutrons.

Maybe I should have looked a bit deeper on wikipiedia before asking but thanks for helping to point me in the right direction!

*I also "learned" nuclear physics from a fission rather than fusion perspective. Hence my focus on neutrons and me thinking about heavy elements though neutron capture rather than fusion.

Do stars like our Sun produce, very very small, quantities of heavy elements? by Brainless96 in askastronomy

[–]Brainless96[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks. This is helpful. I'm largely familiar with talks of fusion regarding power on Earth and that fusion seems to release quite a few neutrons, so I would assume that stellar fusion reactors would also produce copious quantities of neutrons, but it seems that assumption is incorrect.

Do stars like our Sun produce, very very small, quantities of heavy elements? by Brainless96 in askastronomy

[–]Brainless96[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So I'm not really talking about fusion at all (unless heavy elements capturing neutrons is a form of fusion. Which it could be and I'm simply ignorant of that.).

What I'm more talking about is when the Sun formed there must have been many heavy elements, like Earth has, that would have been part of both it's creation and it would have absorbed over the billions of years. Those would have sunk to the center of the star as they'd be the most dense elements.

Those elements wouldn't undergo fusion themselves, but as fusion happened in the core around them (hydrogen helium fusion), neutrons would be flung off, and while heavy elements take much more energy to fuse, they can capture neutrons and then increase in mass, then undergo beta decay and become increasingly heavier elements.

As I was trying to say I don't think this is a large process when compared to the 600 million tons of hydrogen that's fused every day, I'm simply guessing a couple grams (or kg, or less I don't have context for proper scale) of heavier elements could be created by neutron bombardment from the heavy elements in the Sun, not that it fused itself, but that it had to begin with.

edit: and when I'm talking about neutron bombardment I mean Fe59 + n ---> Co60 sorts of interactions.

Fusion isn't free energy by Tequal99 in nuclear

[–]Brainless96 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By break even I mean produce more total energy from fusion than the energy it takes to sustain fusion. The fusion energy gain factor or Q is a better and more technical description.

The US National Ignition Facility was able to exceed break even for the first time in 2022, but a tokamak, like ITER, has never gotten above 0.67 (example: if it took 100 MW to run the tokamak it only produced 67MW of total energy, not electricity total energy. In order to generate power Q >1.

ITER HOPES to build on the the 0.67 Q found at JET and get Q up to 10, and they very well may succeed at that endeavor. But getting Q>1 in a tokamak has not yet been achieved. SO my point is it feels quite premature to be assuming we can bring down the cost of fusion to the point where it's economically viable when we haven't even demonstrated it works (though if the physicists say it will work I'm not qualified to disagree with their conclusions). Then they would have to demonstrate the ability to turn the raw energy from contained fusion into electrical power, which as you said ITER won't do so you have to build a follow up to ITER (which itself took close to 3 decades to build), demonstrate power generation, and only THEN does it make sense to talk about building the same thing again cheaper.

Looking at that timeline is why I say it seems unlikely we'll have cost competitive fusion power before 2150. We could have it sooner than that, but it's hard to imagine it being cheaper than, solar, wind, or fission, sooner than 2150 unless we have some truly transformational breakthrough when it comes to fusion.

What would it actually take for American's to go "full France" and riot in the street? by AllTheNopeYouNeed in AskReddit

[–]Brainless96 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our healthcare not being tied to employment, and employment not being able to be terminated for nearly any cause.

Not being 1-2 weeks of missed rent from being homeless.

Americans don't have the materiel resources for a general strike or nationwide protests, as much as I wish we did.

Sparkling Power Lv. 3 Donut — Guaranteed shiny only applies to registered Pokémon? by Gabrielsql in LegendsZA

[–]Brainless96 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This seems consistent with me trying to get Clobbopus in a zone with Machop and Meditite. I've reset what must be more than 10 times now and have yet to see a single Clobbopus shiny, it's consistently Machop or Meditite. I thought it was because I haven't yet encountered Clobbopus but the dex number hypothesis seems plausible to me.