Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

China are working to build nuclear reactors that don't need water [0] by the Gobi desert (well, have built, but it isn't a commercial reactor). Project cost of around $450 million so far according to Wikipedia. That seems like a more energy-efficient approach to the low-water problem - avoid using any.

Still $75 million over 5 years is small biscuits and it'd be nice tech if they come up with something, although I'm not sure if the US DoE are really the people to be capitalising on it.

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-28/china-thorium-molten-...

View on HN

This is about creating potable water, not cooling water for nuclear plants. Huge portions of the US population live in areas with lots of access to saline water, but minimal access to fresh water - desalination would help reduce demand on a supply that is already collapsing.

The DOE is doing the work because desalination takes huge amounts of energy, and they're looking at ways to reduce this.

> The DOE is doing the work because desalination takes huge amounts of energy, and they're looking at ways to reduce this.

Everything that happens takes energy. Is the DoE going to try and be experts in all of it? They'll have the broadest mandate in history. The consumers of the energy are in a better place to direct the research.

But hey, the US is adding a trillion dollars in debt every 100 days, so the DoE may as well do this thing. There isn't enough money in the pot here to have a serious argument over it.

Yes, the DOE does research on various energy related topics to prepare for the future. First you suggest they should be investing in supply side research (thorium reactors), then you say they shouldn't invest in demand side research (desalination)?

Yes? You say that like it is an unreasonable position, but if you add energy demand and supply side together technically you get the entire economy and a fair amount of stuff that isn't even measured in money. The DoE isn't a bank. That is an absurdly wide field of interests.

If you look at, y'know, energy use in the US [1] then desalination doesn't even rate a mention as an energy sink. The biggest source of waste by far is the 66% losses during energy generation and in electricity and transport. Realistically they should be focusing on the supply of energy.

And to be fair they probably are. I'm repeating myself, but this looks like the bureaucratic equivalent of someone with a bee in the bonnet and nobody could be bothered to tell them no.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Energy_2022.png

By and large, the DOE isn’t doing this research. The federal workforce primarily consists of program managers who oversee how the money is doled out, but is largely hands off on the technical aspects. DOE is the biggest non defense R&D funder in the US, and they tend to cast a wide net rather than go all in on a few select technologies.

The money goes to fund research at academic institutions and national labs, as well as tech transfer programs to private industry (think SBIR/STTR). $75M can fund a surprising amount of TRL 1-4 work needed to get a functional prototype working.

I think that the DoE's interest in this is more about energy consumption than energy generation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com