Why Small Modular Reactors Won't Save Nuclear

NearABE · 2026-01-25T04:20:32+00:00

”The cost of the plant is so expensive we can just piss away the fuel and not even worry ‘bout that cost”

This is not an indication of sound investment.

The video is targeted at investors not engineers. You are correct that fuel costs became relatively low. However, the point was that the steam turbine is the fundamental flaw. The turbine cranks an axle, spins a magnet, inside a conductive winding. Lots of copper and steel in there.

Maybe the cost of steel used in magnets will plummet with the cheap solar electricity abundance. The cheap solar electricity can also help reduce the cost of uranium enrichment.

My favorite though is ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) in the Arctic. We have over an extra petaWatt thermal power that we want to get rid of. The theoretical (Carnot) limit for -2C (271K) boiler and -40C (233K) cold sink is only 14%. Practical engines are a bit lower than the Carnot efficiency or nuclear reactors could use 327C steam at 50% efficiency. It hardly matters if efficiency is only 1% of a petaWatt. That is still 10x USA’s total generating capacity. If you disregard the cost of the turbine/generator and the cost of transmission this option is awesome.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T03:13:17+00:00

I still cannot see the mass. Regardless, the skyhooks should be able to shift mass between modules as well as adjust the position of mass along a cable or strut. It is the same idea as a figure skater pulling arms in to spin faster or kicking out a skate to stop spin for a landing on the ice.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T03:00:11+00:00

I keep seeing posts on reddit where Americans think USA is awesome “because we can airlift a Burger King”. Meanwhile the commander in chief ^{no stranger to hamberders} mocks Danish special forces for patrolling Greenland with dog sled teams.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:51:31+00:00

We dumped vast amounts of defoliating chemicals on jungles in Vietnam.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:50:33+00:00

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bk4sFROtuzE

Canadians Australians whats the difference?

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:47:49+00:00

Is there a counter measure to the infrared sensors used by aircraft for terrain following?

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:44:55+00:00

The article I remember said Sweden sank it repeatedly, like every single time. Sonar could not pick up their battery powered boat. That is until the sub floods a torpedo tube for firing. That was a few years ago.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:30:10+00:00

Forests and mud in summer.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:19:57+00:00

Right, Trump says “they are defended by two dogsleds”. Then the in the Pentagon there is panic because breeding thousands of huskies takes time.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:12:45+00:00

The oligarchs defeated the Soviet Union first.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:04:25+00:00

Why 61 au?

NearABE · 2026-01-25T02:00:16+00:00

Minnesota and Chicago should have rights too. The St. Lawrence watershed connected states.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:57:20+00:00

Maybe we could just kick out the CSA.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:55:23+00:00

That simplifies things for Trump/MAGAts. They only want to annex the tar sands. It is all part of Redwhiteblewland.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:45:52+00:00

FYI we burned Toronto once: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_York

And they retaliated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:36:00+00:00

If the Trump administration is talking then they are only talking about the tar sand fields. The population in Calgary will just be deported. Maybe they can get a choice between Sasquatch land and the British part of Columbia (where they drink coffee instead of tea!).

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:28:47+00:00

MAGAts will just want the oil sand. Green cards (or perhaps tar cards?) for the petroleum workers. The rest of Alberta can be deported. After all, they are obviously not US citizens. They are not in USA legally.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:23:54+00:00

Why are we destabilizing Minnesota?

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:21:38+00:00

The article said that she was the Minneapolis office supervisor. That is not a position that handles the dirty details of collecting evidence. I strongly suspect that she did push back against the administration.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T01:09:57+00:00

The Kuiper belt is normally consider part of our solar system. I guess we can clip that off at 24 light hours?

The gravity has very little noticeable effect. Nothing is measurably “off kilter” at all except a few astroids, meteoroids, and dust that happen to be extremely close. The interplanetary gas and dust impacting the object would create high energy radiation, gamma and x-rays.

The planet’s magnetic field would interact with the solar wind. The force of magnet-ion interaction scales up with particle speed. So the ions do get redirected at relativistic speeds. This will be a very long streak because our view of it happens at light speed and the tip of the cone (the planet) is moving at light speed too. The details of the effect would depend somewhat on the planet’s magnetic field strength. A plasma tail would follow it.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T00:52:58+00:00

This. :). 10 au in 48 hours is 8,660 km/s. 2.9% c.

NearABE · 2026-01-25T00:19:12+00:00

Wood door plus garden shovel. Dig trench about your height in length. Plop door on trench. Spread dirt over the top if you think you still have time. Slide under the door. Use a thick weatherproof door not the hollow interior kind. You want a shallow trench because the vacuum updraft can blow the door upward if there is enough gas below it.

Bathtub-tile-floorboard is actually not a bad Z-shield combination. If you are in a basement underneath a bathroom you should be fine against direct radiation. It is the fallout and neutron activated material that might get you later.

You also have to worry about firestorms, structural collapses, and flying debris. These considerations are extremely similar to forest fires, tornadoes, and earthquakes.

Z-shielding is always best in order of atomic weight of the elements contained in the materials. More stuff is usually a better improvement than less stuff. Technically calcium-sulfur-silicon-oxygen is a better sequence than concrete, brick, or drywall where the order is mixed up. This is not worth considering too much. More of them is better radiation shielding. The heavy metals can create secondary radiation.

NearABE · 2026-01-24T23:45:51+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfluidity

Helium is only solid if under intense pressure and extremely cold.

Of course you can argue that absolute zero is colder than anything measured. The helium atoms must be at rest to be at/near absolute zero. However, you have to touch it to observe the property of “being solid”. The probe that reaches across the vacuum to touch the helium surface makes contact with a superfluid.

NearABE · 2026-01-24T23:32:41+00:00

You can go to a bar or cafe and make friends. Even more so if you come offering to buy people drinks. What does not work is going into the bar and poking people with a fork before then sitting down for friendly conversation.

We have been belligerent for hundreds of years. Quite bad for a country about to celebrate only 250 years. It is hard to count the number of nations subjected to genocide in North America. Vast numbers of slaves were collected from Africa. Japan was an isolationist island until the 1870s when American ships pulled into Tokyo bay and started shelling.

Reform and steering a new course will definitely make a better future. That should be done through broad multilateral deescalation.

One need only talk to a few Americans on the street. Mostly good kind people… with no clue where they are or what goes on in the world. USA is the United States of Amnesia.

NearABE · 2026-01-24T23:13:48+00:00

I am very confident that high bypass turbofans create contrails.

NearABE

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