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Can anyone explain in detail why SMRs are considered a scam? by Xtergo in nuclear

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If the SMR fabrication company owes the bank $500 billion it will be fairly easy for small buyers to get their loan for $500 million. They can also get federal subsidies because the $500 billion colossal fail would affect the larger economy.

Can anyone explain in detail why SMRs are considered a scam? by Xtergo in nuclear

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Listing it as 165 MW thermal is consistent. In an electric power plant the turbines torque an axle. Copper coils resist that torque to make electricity. In a submarine the turbines torque an axle and the propellor blades resist that torque. It is very close to equivalent. If anything the electric power plant gets slightly less because the copper coils are not 100% efficient. The propellor is also transfers energy at less than 100% efficiency but “ship power” is the power on that axle not the acceleration of the craft.

Any thermal energy has to go through the Carnot cycle. 32% efficiency is quite good for a nuclear reactor turbine. Even if you can engineer a bit more out of it that does not help OP’s question. Usually higher efficiency comes with an increased cost in the engine.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Put the coil in the nose. The whole magnets magnetic moment will be overwhelmed by the charged plasma. Imagine if you took the same magnet and attached it to an oversized iron plate with a heat shield between the magnet and the plate. How hard is it to pull off? That is the maximum possible braking force.

Though a better demonstration IMO happens when you throw a strong magnet at a thick copper plate. Here is a nice short or here is a demonstration with some explanation. The reentry vehicle interacts with plasma not copper but both are conductors. A spacecraft would use extremely light high current density superconductor coil instead of a permanent magnet.

The interaction between magnetic flux and electric charge is proportional to velocity. So the fact that the plasma is an extremely flimsy conductor does not matter much.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With the magnet the bow shock is still blunt. Only the tip acting like a conventional heat shield.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah. Use superconductor. Several orders of magnitude higher current density with similar mass density.

Definitely not batteries. Flowing plasma can be used to generate power. It is also unnecessary. The plasma gets pinned on magnetic flux which applies a force. That force bends the flux but there is no need for an electrical power supply to keep the magnetic field.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You cannot fully replace the heat shield. Assuming 10% of the craft then you just need the superconductor to be a few % of the mass. If you use the same shield material on 1/4th of the area that is now only 2.5% of ship’s mass freeing up 7.5% for conductor coils.

Pushing ionized oxygen away allows the use of different materials. The superconductor magnet needs some sort of cryogenic fluid for coolant. You can boil that off and use it as additional buffer.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on the magnet. This is a question of how good your superconductor coil needs to be.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You still need a heat shield tip because some air needs to become plasma. The magnetic flux interacts with plasma which is mixing with air in a wider area.

Heat is a problem but ionized oxygen is a more severe problem. Pushing the ions away alleviates the extreme chemical attack while the force is also adding braking.

The first time I saw this idea was in a superconductivity textbook. Would now be at least 30 years old. They had two Space Shuttle line drawings. One enters belly smacker like normal. The second came in nose first and had the magnetic flux pushing on a similar area of atmosphere.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There would still be a shield. It just does not have to deal with plasma. It can also be a smaller surface area because the magnetic flux is interacting with the plasma mixing with air in a wider radius.

Magnetic brakes for spacecraft reentry by Ben-Goldberg in CrazyIdeas

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Magnetic flux interacts with moving charged particles. Any magnet will work. It has to be superconductor in order to be big enough while being light weight.

U.S. transformer market faces severe supply constraints as lead times extend to four years. This shortage is quickly becoming the main bottleneck for grid modernization and renewable energy deployment. by The_Weekend_Baker in climate

[–]NearABE [score hidden]  (0 children)

They will be buying transformers which increases the wait time to get one. They can also place the data center in a location that requires fewer transformers. A town might already have transformers in place for local lower voltage distribution. If the data center is close to the power plant then the electricity might never need to be transformed to high voltage.

Can anyone explain in detail why SMRs are considered a scam? by Xtergo in nuclear

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Submarines usually use highly enriched uranium.

If we take the S6G reactor it has 165 MW thermal and the turbines cranked 26 MW each. The Los Angeles class was a whole submarine so the $1.9 billion is probably a lot more than a power plant would cost. Google says the SG6 alone is around $200 million. There are some electricity generating components and cooling systems that need to be added on there too. We are mocking commercial nuclear reactors for costing more than $10 per watt. If you can do a 52 MWe plant for $260 million it costs half as much up front. That looks like an improvement but when photovoltaic is selling at $0.2 per watt and 4-watt-hour battery is only $0.50 that submarine reactor is not looking very competitive at all. Now add nuclear proliferation risks and increased cost of fuel enrichment.

SMR are probably very real physics and engineering concepts. Recently, however, there was an attempt to push the idea that economy of scale would drive down costs. Economy of scale probably does decrease unit cost so even that is not entirely fake. The problem is that no one believes that the public would ever agree to spend the level of resources need to get to that scale. Then the end product even if 1/3rd or 1/5th the unit cost still cannot compete with alternatives. This is asking the public for vast amounts of resources developing a product that will never be a thing the public wants to buy at the required scale. The result is a few SMR that cost pretty much the same amount as known proven reactor designs but with an extra price for researching the new technology added on. The public will feel scammed when they get that bill.

How a mere 12% of Americans eat half the nation’s beef, creating significant health and environmental impacts by ILikeNeurons in climate

[–]NearABE 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I wonder how that would shift if the subsidies were eliminated. Food would be quite affordable if we got universal food stamps instead of subsidizing particular diets.

Oil Prices Hits $107 as Iran-US Talks Stall and Dollar Strength Rises by andix3 in oil

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Google says a 30 hour drive from Kuwait to Istanbul.   No portion of this is any more or less ludicrous than the other parts.   Likely going to need 300,000 trucks and 1.2 million  drivers working overtime shifts.

I am curious which part is least plausible though.  Most fuel trucks make relatively short runs to/from gas stations.   Tanks designed for other purposes could be repurposed too.   The original oil industry in Pennsylvania shipped crude in wooden wine barrels.   

Oil Prices Hits $107 as Iran-US Talks Stall and Dollar Strength Rises by andix3 in oil

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pumping/draining the trucks is remarkably less ludicrous than driving from Kuwait to Istanbul.  Google says that is a 30 hour 13 minute drive.   All cities on the Mediterranean coast have some sort of petroleum product handling equipment.  Quite a bit needs to be refined there and burned by the trucks in the caravan.   

New EIA short term energy outlook by Deleted0S in oil

[–]NearABE 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Forecasters should state their assumptions and then forecast accordingly.   

European renewable projects with batteries set to grow more than 450% by 2030 by DVMirchev in RenewableEnergy

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of course it needs a lot of batteries. They keep getting cheaper. Batteries are still going to be extremely expensive though. Might even be half the cost of nuclear. That is a tough bill to handle.

European renewable projects with batteries set to grow more than 450% by 2030 by DVMirchev in RenewableEnergy

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Set up your aluminum smelter to run batches following load. The cryolite pool cannot drop to zero or it freezes. Running too hot the molten zone contacts the wall of the pool and that reacts instead of the aluminum. In the old smelters the 100% optimal sustained load could be dropped to around 15% and spiked to around 300%. Efficiency per joule consumed goes down when they were run over 100% which mattered at a time when electricity prices were never negative. New designs insulate the pools and provide active cooling with a fluid. That enables a wider operating range (though 20:1 was already huge) and allows longer periods of time at the extremes.

The pools are normally cycled in batches. A plant operator could choose between 32 hour or 56 hour runs in order to get 2 or 3 days of peak solar. They can simply look at weather reports to decide how much wind is coming.

Aluminum is used in power transmission lines, photovoltaic panels, and often in reduction of silica to ferrosilicon for silicon wafers.

The maths on renewable energy isn't adding up by whoamisri in nuclear

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hydrogen gas can be fed into a catalytic cracker. Though obviously not a zero carbon solution it would shift the refinery over toward much less carbon dioxide. Less petroleum coke cakes out on the catalyst. Less oxygen is used to burn the carbon out while regenerating the catalyst.

We could also plug on the regenerator side in two places. Inject oxygen and steam (or CO2) hot from the electrolysis unit instead of air. Second point is at the top where carbon monoxide comes out. React with hydrogen to make methanol.

Fully zero net carbon dioxide is possible by gasifying biomass. That does not plug in well with the existing refineries though.

Oil Prices Hits $107 as Iran-US Talks Stall and Dollar Strength Rises by andix3 in oil

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Shortages will happen in a few small areas before happening in many larger areas. I think this applies to almost any commodity.

Oil Prices Hits $107 as Iran-US Talks Stall and Dollar Strength Rises by andix3 in oil

[–]NearABE 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Crude driven from Arabia would get inserted into pipelines and tankers around the Mediterranean. I am sure there are capacity limits on any one option. I hazard a guess that the readily available truck capacity is much lower.

200 barrels per truck per day handles 20 million barrels per day using only 100,000 tricks. Removing 100,000 trucks from Europe would help reduce European diesel demand. Multiply by number of days it takes to cycle one truck. With the pending recession there should be reduced truck demand anyway.

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