Egregoros

@fluffy @p In a boiling water reactor you have two sources of hydrogen, neutrons occasionally split water into hydrogen and oxygen, this is a minor source and a catalytic combiner keeps up with this source, but when you flash the water to steam it reacts with the zirconium cladding in the fuel rods and this was the source in Fukushima and a problem that can't be designed out of boiling water reactors.

pistolero

@nanook @fluffy All these reactors running 50 years and

I'm in favor of thorium salt reactors. I like them. I'm just not super worried about something that's only happened to one reactor after it got hit with an earthquake two orders of magnitude higher than it was supposed to.

Friend of mine worked in an oil refinery a while and I think *anything* is safer than California's oil refineries.

I support your efforts but I remain unconvinced that conventional reactors are so terrible and thorium-salt reactors are still in the design phase.

Tard

@tard@clew.lol remote

@p @nanook @fluffy
I used to be very pro nuclear for baseline power but now I think we should copy China and build out massive solar farms with battery/hydrogravity storage and save nuclear for shipping, remote locations, and outer space.

pistolero

@tard @fluffy @nanook China's got a lithium surplus, which we do not have. We have Venezuela. Until we have solid-state hydrogen fuel cells (another thing that we have worked out in prototypes but have not turned into mass-produced devices; I think 10-20 years back, right, the guy used some alloy that was good at binding hydrogen to store energy in a stable state; right now hydrogen fuel cells are like nitroglycerin and ideally we can develop TNT).

BaJaX

@bajax@baj.ax remote

@p @tard @nanook @fluffy kind of a tangent, but what do you think about the goodenough glass batteries?

pistolero

@bajax @fluffy @nanook @tard Unfamiliar. Please do go on.

BaJaX

@bajax@baj.ax remote

@p @tard @nanook @fluffy it's a solid-state rechargeable battery, a replacement for current lithium tech, they announced to great fanfare around 2016-- they had the backing of a major name in the field (John B. Goodenough) but their description of the solid, glass-based electrolyte sounded like scifi mumbo jumbo at first blush.

pistolero

@bajax @fluffy @nanook @tard

> but their description of the solid, glass-based electrolyte sounded like scifi mumbo jumbo at first blush

I have now looked at their Wikipedia page and am furrowing.

Caleb James DeLisle

@fluffy@fsebugoutzone.org remote

Batteries will start making a lot more sense when nuclear drives power prices down by an order of magnitude. For the moment, oil is competitive so it's just not worth doing anything other than internal combustion.

touch fluffy tail (Heroic)

@cjd @p @bajax @tard @nanook
nuclear power won't drive prices down

Caleb James DeLisle

So you're saying that the safety issues with nuclear power are so intractable that the energy density of uranium is totally meaningless, and sending people underground to dig coal is just going to be the most efficient way to make electricity forever?

This sounds like some kind of "no combustion carriage will ever be a match for the mighty horse"...

nanook

@cjd @p @fluffy @bajax @tard Who are you speaking to? I'm not saying that, I am saying boiling water reactors have rare but catastrophic failure modes that molten salt reactors lack.

Caleb James DeLisle

Was a reply to fluffy, who seems to think nuclear energy just has no future, first principles be damned.

I can't imagine a future 100 years from now where nuclear energy isn't cheap and ubiquitous - unless it's some post-apocalyptic dystopia, or else some world government tyranny where everyone is forbidden from touching the magic rocks.

IMO once the US empire finally collapses and the IAEA is defanged, sketchy Alibaba reactors will start popping up all over the world - and THEN finally we'll start to see some progress on safer cheaper designs.

nanook

@cjd @p @fluffy @bajax @tard Thank you for clarifying. As a US citizen, I rather hope a collapse isn't necessary because social unrest in a nation armed to the teeth with hydrogen bombs opens up a lot of potential for bad things to happen. Rather, I would like to see humanity overcome scarcity and with adequate pie the motivation to fight over it disappears.

Caleb James DeLisle

> I rather hope a collapse isn't necessary

Picrel doesn't continue forever. It always ends the same way, as in Athens and in Rome, the same in the US.

> armed to the teeth with hydrogen bombs

Will be like the USSR collapse, highly unlikely anything serious happens b/c oligarchs who control the bombs have families too, and they plan on living past the end of the empire. If you go Rambo on the world - you might have a lot of fun, but when you're done, you're gonna be hunted down and exterminated.

> humanity overcome scarcity

🎵 IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE, LIVING LIFE IN PEACE... 🎶

nanook

@cjd @p @fluffy @bajax @tard I don't care to see anyone collapse, and before you get too excited about debt, consider who the debt is to. That said it isn't my desire to encourage conflicts or collapse, not here, not in Russia, not in Israel, not in the EU, I am hoping for and working towards a better future. I don't represent my country and it doesn't represent me, I simply see a path towards a better future for everyone and am pursuing it to the best of my ability.

Caleb James DeLisle

It'd be nice if countries didn't have a fixed lifespan, but they don't because they deteriorate.

From the time of its founding, a country only ever gets more laws, more taxes, more subsidies, more corruption, and more debt until eventually it's so stupid and broken that it cannot support it's own weight - and then it collapses.

It's always been like that, and if you can figure out how to prevent it, then you've made the greatest discovery of at least the past 2 millennia.

Replying to @cjd@pkteerium.xyz

nanook

@cjd @p @fluffy @bajax @tard China and India have both survived longer than recorded history and yet they are still here, they've grown, shrunk, and grown again, along the way but they still exist. So I don't take the doom and gloom two seriously, I see a path forward, I hope people will choose wisely.

Replies

Replying to @nanook@friendica.eskimo.com

Caleb James DeLisle