orson2077

Good lord, read Termination Shock by Neil Stephenson. Stratospheric aerosol injection is effective, but comes with severe risks, and can even be used as a strategic weapon (e.g. inject your sulphur over X and disrupt the monsoon in the Punjab, fucking their agriculture).

For anyone interested in the economics of fission reactors, Illinois Energy Prof did a GREAT video a while back: https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY?feature=shared

My impression was that stratospheric aerosol injection has been kept out of the public consciousness deliberately. If the public discussed it now, they’d learn quickly about things like termination shock, and the calculable consequences to weather systems depending on where the sulphur is injected (eg Inject over Norway and mess up el Nino), and come to the conclusion that it’s a pretty undesirable option. If, however, it’s left to the last minute, fossil fuels can continue, and then use this as a “last resort” card.

Hah! Sliding keyboard, that absolutely rocks!

iPhone 4 was the apex of phone design, I will die on this hill!

Amen. An updated 4" flagship would be incredible! They say that small phones are for people with small hands, but no-one can one-hand a 6" phone without holding it like an idiot. I want the claw grip back!

There's no physics basis for teleportation, whereas there is a clear physics basis for fusion. The way you assess things is terribly flawed.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I envy your naivete. You are extremely optimistic about people and politics.

Fusion-relevant materials research could have absolutely advanced with funding back in the 70s. Lithium compatible structural material and 14MeV neutron source experiments immediately come to mind, not to mention tritium permeation and extraction. There was tonnes to learn, and they chose not to fund it.

Fusion is always 50 years away for a reason: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5gi9yh/fusion_i...

IIRC, the sum total of all fusion research throughout all of history is USD$100-200B. It's obvious governments/industry/humanity doesn't really want it, or they'd go fund it.

They looked into this concept a while back and came to the conclusion that unless the population density was great enough along the guideway, the maintenance cost was too high.

Is this article a joke? - The chapter titled "Advanced reactors may make waste problem worse" mentions nothing about waste. - The chapter titled "Not likely to help cut emissions" acknowledges that it would help cut emissions. - HALEU fuel is needed to offset the smaller size of the reactor core, which results in increased neutron leakage: nope. - "Factory construction is a risk": compared to traditional, behemoth reactor construction? Really?

There's more, but I'm at work. Is this article actually a joke?

They’re using hyperbole to illustrate the point; don’t miss the point or deliberately try to derail the conversation.

Hey, I'd love to live like the elves in Lord of the Rings, but it's not gonna happen. The first world offloads its manufacturing burden to the third world, then criticises them for polluting the atmosphere with fossil fuels. Also, the majority of the world do not enjoy the standard of living we do in the first world, and they will want to. Like it or not, energy demand will increase. It is non-negotiable unless you think there'll be some great die-off.

Regarding their main points:

- Too expensive. Nuclear power plants usually operate for 40-80 years, making their ROI after the 20 year mark (greatly varies). The report's choice of "10-15 years" for a return on investment is suspicious, as it corresponds more to the life of PVs and wind turbines.

- Too slow. The first instances of a new design always take longer than the mass production instances. It's madness to compare prospective factory-manufacturable reactors to the behemouth reactors we are used to today. (Also, from memory, I think Japan once made one of those behemoth reactors in 22 months... delays are often not for technical reasons).

- Too risky. Without storage and/or distribution solutions, renewables will inevitably depend on fossil fuels; this applies both to service economies and manufacturing economies. The difference is that nuclear captures is externalities, unlike fossil fuels.

- A bad fit. I actually agree with this one in some cases. For example, Australia has abundant land and great weather; they could probably get by with pure renewables. However, countries like Germany (which has so-so weather and some heavy industry) would be hard-pressed to do the same. They could achieve 100% renewables by giving up certain industries, but I don't think that's reasonable to ask.

- The Boeing Problem Boeing's fall from grace has everything to do with perverse incentives and regulatory failure. If the public is crucifying them for dodgy planes, I imagine they'd do even worse for making dodgy reactors. Regulation is a must for nuclear, and never has anyone serious thought otherwise.

I have a tremendous love for the fast breeder reactors (particularly Superphénix); that we had that technology so long ago astounds me. However, I recognise that they are technically challenging.

From a modern, pragmatic point of view, I'm very partial to SMRs and AMRs (advanced modular reactors). They are also easier to implement on non-technical grounds (e.g. site permissions).

Modern powerplants are closed-loop and do not consume water, although they may dump heat into it. Water is not consumed (in any great quantity) or contaminated, except that which is recirculated inside.

(Background: I am an engineer that has spent most of their career in energy - fossil fuels, nuclear and renewables - the whole shebang. I care deeply about climate change, and recognise the non-negotiable need of humanity for ever-increasing amounts of energy.)

Take it from me - I would absolutely love renewables to displace all other forms of energy. However, from an engineering point of view, I know this is simply not feasible without some strong developments in energy storage and distribution. With today's technology, nuclear is the only real threat to the hegemony of fossil fuels, and the only practical hope of reaching climate goals (let alone long-term energy security goals). I think the fossil fuel industry knows this, and so frame their anti-nuclear rhetoric as a renewables-vs-nuclear debate, backing renewables.

If I wore a tinfoil hat, I would say that a lot of the support for renewables (and hostility towards nuclear) was encouraged/stoked/funded by the fossil fuel lobby.

There's an interesting blog that catalogues cases where the fossil fuel industry has scratched on nuclear. If you're interested, I'll link it below.

https://atomicinsights.com/smoking-gun/

As for SMRs specifically, I think they have a lot of legs. Reactors that can be assembled (and serviced) in factories would go a long way to lowering the overall cost of the reactors (even accounting for the reduced energy-cost density of the individual reactors).

Questions welcome. I created an account just to give my two cents on a field to which I have dedicated my career.