
Russian plutonium-fueled breeder reactor reaches first criticality (2014) - jcfrei
http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/nuclear-russia/2014-08-holy-grail-epic-fail-russia-readies-commission-first-plutonium-breeder-uninspiring-global-track-record
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kvark
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?

~~~
trhway
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 :)

~~~
jhallenworld
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](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...](http://energyrealityproject.com/lets-run-the-numbers-nuclear-
energy-vs-wind-and-solar/)

~~~
iwwr
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.

~~~
elektromekatron
_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.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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.

~~~
elektromekatron
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.

~~~
iwwr
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 :)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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.

~~~
elektromekatron
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.

~~~
tired_man
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.

~~~
elektromekatron
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NorNed),

and the Russian power grid IPS/UPS
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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...](http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph240/sell1/docs/paris.pdf)

~~~
tired_man
Man, my working knowledge is really outdated.

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ak217
I wonder if NASA is going to end up buying plutonium for RTGs from Russia
years down the road.

~~~
dogma1138
They've started making PU238 again, they've actually almost ran out of it and
getting it from the Russians is becoming harder and harder due to tensions
between the countries...

[http://spacenews.com/russia-withholding-plutonium-nasa-
needs...](http://spacenews.com/russia-withholding-plutonium-nasa-needs-deep-
space-exploration/)

So after pretty much running out of PU238 after spending most of it on New
Horizons and Curiosity NASA has finally managed to get funding for the DOE to
start making it again...

------
gpvos
(2014)

------
tdyen
Thats a mess waiting to happen. Just crazy, after Fukushima I lost any belief
remaining that the nuclear industry can be safe.

~~~
BonsaiDen
Yes, nuclear power does have a safety problem, but not a imminent one. The
real problem does not come from operations, but from the waste these
operations leave behind.

Minimizing and storing nuclear waste are the far greater challenges than just
running the plants.

Another problem is the question, who is going to pay for all that waste in the
end? Well first off, most likely future generations and when we look at the
current time frame, that's actually not as clear as one might think. For
example, the German government has long struggled - and still is - to actually
get the power plant operators to pay for the waste disposal. Before that is
was pretty much "We get to make the money basically for free, and you pay for
the waste." Which of course is also an issue with the argument that nuclear
power is cheap, because in most cases the cost of waste disposal and final
storage are not included in the calculation, because these things can just
"happen later".

Waste disposal was way too long under the radar, so there was no pressure to
develop new, better alternatives to the current reactor technologies for a
very long time, since "state of the art" was just good enough, and cheap.

~~~
13thLetter
> Minimizing and storing nuclear waste are the far greater challenges than
> just running the plants.

Yes, but they are political challenges, not engineering challenges. It's well-
known how to keep nuclear waste secure for the length of time one should
reasonably care about. Keeping, say, Congress from killing the storage
facility due to anti-nuclear ignorance is what needs to be overcome here.

But that being said, "ignorant people are preventing this problem from being
solved" is not an argument against solving the problem, it's an argument in
favor of educating and convincing the people.

~~~
dredmorbius
A challenge which persists for tens of thousands to millions of years is well
beyond merely "political". You're going to need to come up with a different
term for that.

Keep in mind that for a long-term nuclear regime, you're also dealing with the
extreme likelihood that large amounts of not-yet-vitrified wastes in
"temporary" storage may face a sudden change in operational procedure and
personnel. Say, during the Widespread Global Disagreement of 2639-2645, in
which team Allied and team Axis butt heads once again under stars and bars and
revived flags of Indian auspiciousness.

What's your technical solution for that? Or any number of comparable
scenarios?

What are the comparable failure modes for widespread renewables
infrastructures?

~~~
13thLetter
> A challenge which persists for tens of thousands to millions of years is
> well beyond merely "political".

This is absurd, and it's absurd for two reasons.

a) The amount of waste which is still dangerous after that time is
meaningless, compared to the amount of other dangerous waste we create
(including in the process of constructing batteries and solar panels!) which
will still remain dangerous indefinitely, and which is far less well secured
and understood.

b) For what other endeavor of man are we required to address its consequences
literally millions of years in the future? A renewables infrastructure will
consume a large amount of rare earth metals, you know: are you prepared to
address the awful consequences of the great neodymium shortage of 11,152 AD?
If not, then where do you get off asking for similar future-proofing where
nuclear is concerned?

~~~
dredmorbius
_For what other endeavor of man are we required to address its consequences
literally millions of years in the future?_

 _Tu quoque_ fallacy.

Several. Just to be clear, I'm not simply holding nuclear to this standard.

Population, energy systems, resource utilisation, topsoil and water use,
environmental contamination.

How long you want to consider "long term" is also an open question, though
I'll note:

The modern computer age is roughly 50 years old.

The modern age of mass-industrialisation: electricity, automobiles, mass
media, roughly a century old.

The Industrial Age itself, 200 years.

Western Civilisation, about 2,500 years.

Civilisation itself, and history, 6,000 years.

Anatomically modern man, about 200,000 years.

Divergence from common ancestors with chimps, 2 million.

Emergence of mammals, very roughly, 150mya.

Looking forward, there's perhaps 500m to 1 billion years in which life
resembling that we know can survive on Earth.

Meantime, on the present "business as usual" track, there are numerous
challenges which present on the timescale of years to decades -- shorter if
you consider the prospect of nuclear annihilation (minutes to hours), somewhat
longer for some more-abundant mineral resources. But numerous challenges seem
likely to converge between 2020 and 2100 or so, with the implications of
several of _those_ including challenges to running long-lived complex systems
with profound implications. Such as creating large quantities of nuclear waste
and/or facilities which are not likely to be properly decommissioned and
remediated. Hell, there's ample existing problems with this ranging from the
former USSR/Russia, US, and elsewhere, with only modest amounts of political
and economic disruption.

But I'd suggest that:

1\. Avoiding making near-term circumstances more complex than they are (10-200
years or so).

2\. Considering just what problems it is that nuclear power does _and does
not_ address, directly.

3\. A view to a 200 year (industrialisation), 6,000 year (history), to 200k-1m
year (evolutionary drift) would likely be somewhat useful to keep in
considering pretty much _all_ future paths and decisions.

Along with questions like "why are we here", in a thermodynamic/systems sense,
and "what are the implications of this", for both us and the systems with
which we interact.

Maximising throughput without limit strikes me as potentially problematic.

Something I'm putting a fair bit of thought into:
[https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/FAQ](https://reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/wiki/FAQ)

~~~
13thLetter
"Several. Just to be clear, I'm not simply holding nuclear to this standard.

Population, energy systems, resource utilisation, topsoil and water use,
environmental contamination."

Okay, I apologize for being a bit unfair. That being said...

You can't optimize all those things at the same time. If you're concerned
about carbon dioxide emissions from power generation leading to the most
catastrophic possible greenhouse effect, that's far more damaging than a small
amount of nuclear waste buried in a mountain somewhere, and the possibility
that some small number of people in a nation or culture that doesn't even
exist today may be foolish enough to dig it up a thousand years from now. Such
a tradeoff would be well worth it -- even to those folks a thousand years from
now, because a modern-day Earth that doesn't have to deal with an
environmental catastrophe is going to be wealthier and better-ordered a
thousand years from now than one that does.

~~~
dredmorbius
_You can 't optimize all those things at the same time._

Also to be clear: I see total throughput, itself a function of population and
affluence, as the fundamental challenge. It's not a question of optimisation,
but of living within the possibility envelope.

And the harder you push up against that envelope the greater your systemic
risk.

There are also nonsystemic risks: asteroid impact, nearby supernova or gamma-
ray burst, etc. But as I see it now, the biggest risks humans face _are_
systemic and self-induced.

As my earlier nuclear comments have made clear: I'm not _anti_ nuke, but I see
substantial problems, enough to wonder if they're worth the trouble.

