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Comment by kvark | Hacker News Reader

The article is incredibly pessimistic from the start, to the point of being FUD. The fact is, BN-800 is trying to get further than "other nuclear heavyweights" could go. Why not just cheer up together instead of whining?

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In general - plutonium breeder reactors don't move our civilization forward. Nobody would be allowed to have them except the already nuke having countries, and for them it is just a minor improvement, if any, in nuclear energy production.

Specifically for Russia - i'm Russian and i know how inherently careless Russian mentality is. Any of such objects is just a disaster waiting to happen (people outside don't understand that Chernobyl wasn't really "accidental accident", instead it was just like Russian roulette accident ; for illustration of current Russian technological degradation look at the recent space launches history). Additional issue - in particular with Russian corruption (and rise of Islamic powers, specifically Chechnya, inside Russia) it is just a matter of time before somebody will sell 10kg of plutonium to somebody else :)

I basically agree with you, but the following paper makes a good case to keep some research going. Basically we already have at least one long-term (5 billion years!) non-solar energy source should all else be depleted.

http://www.sustainablenuclear.org/PADs/pad11983cohen.pdf

This one makes a good case for it, vs. solar:

http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear...

That is also the promise of nuclear breeder reactors, an ability to turn natural uranium into nuclear fuel, which will increase the availability of fuel by over 100 times. If you also consider thorium cycles, multiply by 4.

Nuclear is a huge and yet untapped energy source, which is unlikely to be depleted even with constant annual increased demand. Nuclear is more feasible at least up to the point we start to cover non-trivial percentages of the planet in solar panels.

non-trivial percentages of the planet in solar panels.

0.1% of the earth's surface area to match current total energy requirements. Which sounds tiny. Or the same area as Spain, which sounds huge.

Or space-based solar and lasers! Which can get as large as you like and not destroy ecologies the size of Spain. And works 24 hrs a day, not 12.

Well, you would split it up a bit, rather than bulldozing an ecology the size of Spain. Would probably be quicker to roll out than the space based version and there are grid scale storage technologies available which might be relatively expensive, but are still orders of magnitude cheaper than solving the same problem by going into orbit. In the long run I think orbital solar looks promising, but there is a lot more work left to do there than with implementing it at ground level.

And I believe the opposite. Remember power generation also has to be delivered, so solar farms will want to be near cities. There's not a lot of room, it will take more land that the freeway system! And that took decades to seize the land through eminent domain.

The opposite of which bit?

Orbital solar starts to make sense when you need a collection area that's larger than what's feasible for Earth and currently Earth is not scarce as far as available surface area :)

It is, near cities where the energy has to be generated. And its hard to procure because of eminent domain fights, environmental impact statements and high costs.

Given we are in a world of 500 km underwater interconnects and synchronous grids that span up to eight time zones, I am not sure why you think electricity needs to be generated right next to cities.

Though, that said, existing urban rooftops are over a third of the required area to power the world, so you might as well stick some there while you are at it.

Transmitting electricity is quite a bit different from transmitting bytes. That's the main reason we are using Alternating Current rather than Direct Current to power virtually everything.

I'm not talking about data cable.

Was referring to NorNed, a 500km HVDC 700MW interconnect between the Netherlands and Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed,

and the Russian power grid IPS/UPS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPS/UPS

edit - the limits to how far you can push transmission are very high indeed. For instance, here's a study from 1984 that puts an upper limit on AC at 3000 - 4000km and for DC at 7000km. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/sell1/docs/pari...

Man, my working knowledge is really outdated.

Sahara desert is big :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Africa_satellite_orthogra...

Shade from big solar panel installs may even create quasi-mini-oasises for animals/plants.

Bellona is a Norwegian environmental organization. They have worked quite a lot with nuclear safety in former Soviet union from the early nineties and onward, that got very problematic after the fall of the Soviet union (and really was before that too). In addition to their general anti nuclear stance, they distrust the Russians ability to do this safely in the first place as well. Given the safety record of russion nuclear power, that may not be taken out of thin air.

I do see their mission and the message of the article. The concern is founded. However the way it was expressed could be more neutral.

There are several fundamental reasons why it's incredibly difficult to optimize a Plutonium breeding reactor for anything other than Plutonium production. Which makes it an incredibly poor choice for safe, cost-effective power generation, and increases the proliferation risks immensely.

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