Posts by bombastic bob

Re: What about the operational costs?

on-site placement gives you the opportunity to use waste heat like a co-generation plant.

Hot water can create chilled water with an absorption chiller [LiBr type for example].

Waste heat can also create hot water to heat buildings in winter, and [pre-]heat hot water for various uses [like bathrooms and mop closets]

Waste heat is probably 80% of the thermal output of the reactor, with about 20% becoming electricity. If you can just use the waste heat effectively it can offset a LOT of electricity and/or carbon-based fuel usage, potentially saving TONS of money.

Re: What waste

throw some lime on it (that's what I learned in boy scouts back in the day), like you do when digging a latrine

Re: What about the operational costs?

no way to meltdown, ...

I still think you would need an emergency cooling system of some kind

Re: What about the operational costs?

after a nuclear reactor shuts down, the initial decay heat can be as high as 10% of whatever the operating power just was. Over an hour or two, it drops to about 1-2% which will slowly drop over several days until it becomes a low enough level that is easily managed.

This initial decay heat at shutdown has to be removed to ensure safety. So a cooling system would have to be present that can reliably remove high levels of decay heat following an emergency shutdown, and then operate without electricity if need be.

I have seen such designs in U.S. Navy vessels, for emergency cooling. All you would need is some 100% reliable way of sinking the heat, even if it is just a standby tank of water.

But ideally it can be managed with a proper design. I like the idea of bringing in a nuclear power plant on a railroad car. You could literally leave it on the train car (inside of a shielded containment building of course) and just "plug it in" like someone suggested. OK, the cables for 50MW of electricity do not just "plug in" _THAT_ easily, though it COULD be just a scale up from shore power cabling on a nuclear ship. Typical shore power hookup was an hour or two as I recall.

As for waste, the tech to reprocess that stuff WILL need to be developed. Otherwise it becomes both wasteful AND dangerous to just store it. No more NIMBY attitudes blocking it, either. Make it SAFE. CAN be done.

And the co-generation idea of using waste heat from the SMRs to "do things" is also pretty cool. [absorption chillers for air conditioning immediately come to mind]. If half of your data center buildings' heating and A/C came from waste heat, imagine the economic benefits of THAT.

Design PRIMARILY for safety IS more expensive but I think in the longer term it will cost less.

[To the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet properly categorized the decomissioning cost of wind farm equipment and spent solar panels, not to mention potential accidents from old embrittled blades and towers that could potentially come crashing down]

Re: ChatGPT - Hmm

No, it is the GOLD that is heavier, because it is WORTH more. Expensive things are heavy

And gold is CERTAINLY not "light as a feather". EVERYBODY knows THAT!

/me runs away to avoid stains from flying tomatoes

Re: Critical thinking

Perhaps using AI to write papers is a byproduct of NOT teaching proper critical thinking, or having "outside the box" thinking CONSTANTLY getting punished in some fashion, so what is a student to do about it?

End result, use the AI to generate something that will (hopefully) not get you into some kind of trouble.

(Either that or pure laziness)

Re: Critical thinking

from the artcle: Teachers need to work harder to get students to write and think for themselves

The good professors will want their students to think for themselves.

Sadly there seem to be too many tenured profs that want to INDOCTRINATE instead of EDUCATE.

'Wokeness' is evidence of that. Intolerance of TRUE free speech and free thought on a typical college campus (at least in the USA) is STIFLING free thinking. Anything that steps out of lockstep with "The Woke" gets "intimidated away" by loud woke activists, with both students AND staff on BOTH sides (i.e. giving AND receiving). And the target of "what is acceptable" moves continuously. And in SOME cases, "wrong thinking" might even get you EXPELLED.

How is THAT any kind of environment to "get students to write and think for themselves" ??

(might wanna start fixing it from THERE, yeah)

Re: "both cooperating"

Never underestimate the ability of a high paid schlickmeister attorney to get Sammy Brain-Fried acquitted.

News update: Brain-Fried is out on $250 million in bail. Apparently his parents put up equity in their Palo Alto home ($17mil I think) as a security for the bail bond. So where the HELL did this family of Stanford college professors get enough money to OWN a home like that? Or, did Brain-Fried recently pay CASH for that [in which case it should go to the bankruptcy court to cover FTX losses, In My Bombastic Opinion].

Short conclusion, Brain-Fried has more than the $100k he claims he was left with after the aftermath. Right. Apparently there is enough money squirreled away in various places, and it's probably paying the lawyers. AND there are the millions in "gifts" for "charity" to various politicians, from very liberal Democrats to RINO Republicans (apparently Brain-Fried was trying to affect outcomes of Republican primaries this year).

This kind of "throwing money about" and then - miraculously - NOT knowing where it all went, suggests there was a LOT more planning on HIS end than people want to see (or admit to).

Meanwhile, Sammy Brain-Fried is home for Christmas - with an ankle bracelet, living with mommy and daddy like a good basement dweller. It's only a short step down from living in a multi-million dollar hippy commune in the Bahamas, but hey, Sammy Brain-Fried is just having a bad month...

(if they do not put this guy in prison for LIFE, he WILL BE BACK - guarantee it!)

These guys need to be in Jail, in addition to the fines.

A special placer in *HELL* also.

I remember getting MANY of those calls, several times a day even, AND complaining about them online (there's a web page for do not call list complaints). VERY irritating. Went on for most of the year, as I recall. The case reportedly focuses on 2 months, which involves enough evidence to warrant prosecution. But the sheer volume of calls for what I remember to be MOST of the year (with short breaks in between) is probably 2 to 3 times what they're being charged with.

I have to turn off the ringer on my phone because of irritating robocallers. Just the answering machine picks up. It has a speaker, so i can hear it if someone is leaving a message, but the 4 ring delay usually stops the robos from continuing. However, if the robo "talks" over the greeting I sometimes lose the info I need to complain about it properly.

Re: Errm that would be an extremely short lived isotope of Magnesium!

it's usually too hard to use gucharmap to find the right unicode char... I spent 2-3 minutes the other day trying to find the '≠'

Re: "Frankly, for a country that came up with the Manhattan Project in the 1940s"

Oh yeah I should mention some things about Three Mile Island. The biggest problem here was a lack of communication, i.e operator error, combined with a stuck valve, improper valve position indication (it indicated shut), and the placement of indicators within the operations room that were too far apart (meaning you obsess over one panel without realizing the other is telling you a different story). So they manually overrode things they should NOT have, making the problem WORSE. When they finally realized it was too late,l the core had been uncovered and there was a steam bubble, followed by a Zr-water reaction that formed a large hydrogen bubble, which exposed the fuel, all helping to cause a meltdown that made everything go to hell really fast.

it was a lesson to the industry, but not to say "bad investment" - just "train more" and "design better". Nuke reactors are safe when designed and operated properly. Those last 2 bits are important.

(I could go into more detail but Wikipedia may already do that)

Re: "Frankly, for a country that came up with the Manhattan Project in the 1940s"

Some of what you have said reflects popular opinion but not necessarily science and engineering fact.

Example: US operators have an obsession with running their nukes 100% 24/7 as baseload

The fact is that most (if not all) large civilian reactors either have a zero or a positive "alpha-T" - i.e. the coefficient of the relationship between water temperature and 'reactrivity'. This means these reactors are inherently unstable, so in order to control them, you need to use methods that are reliable at maintaining a constant power level. Changes in power cause 'transient' conditions that work AGAINST the reactor's controllability. This is why you SLOOoooowly bring power up over several DAYS when starting up one of these things. Then they run that way for weeks at 100% until you shut them down for maintenance. This is safest AND most profitable at the same time.

The variations on the grid are normally handled by carbon-fuel plants and hydroelectric plants. Wind and Solar could do the same if there were not such an "obsession" for getting more [expensive] power from THOSE instead. It would be much easier to feather the props on a wind farm than it would be to lower a nuke plant's output power [unless they dump steam, but that's inefficient].

You are right in a lot of ways. We'd have TONS of competing reactor designs RIGHT NOW if only those with political (and possibly financial) interests AGAINST nuclear power had NOT been flinging endless vexatious sueballs at the nuclear industry since the 1960's... including NIMBYs that won't let us build nuclear waste treatment plants nor ship it through their area.

Yeah, THERE's your problem...

Re: Mochovce 3

The USA has HUGE coal deposits still... not gonna run out of THAT any time soon! (being able to mine for it without gummint opposition, that's something entirely different)

Germany might want to think of ways to become more energy self-sufficient, in any case.

Re: Well.

Sharks with frickin' lasers? I thought it was ill tempered sea bass! After all the sharks ARE endangered, and Bill would not want to turn in his 'woke' card over that...

Re: "It's a real shame he didn't go for a breeder reactor instead"

yep, sounds nice and "sciency" to me, too. Nice perspective. I did not realize they were using alloy fuel though. I would be curious about delayed neutrons in a fast reactor, whether or not prompt neutrons are at a higher percentage than in thermal reactors. I suspect they are different since the fast fission product yield curve (Mae West curve) differs somewhat from thermal. I am not sure by how much.

In any case without enough delayed neutron precursors the reaction lifecycle will be too short to control it properly, and with fast neutrons you also lose at least SOME of the stabilizing factors of "negative alpha-T" and are stuck controlling it like a very large reactor that might have a 0 or even positive "alpha-T". These are some of the reasons that thermal fission is preferred over fast fission, other than a few physics details like buckling and macroscopic cross section for fission. But alternative designs are, well, "alternative" so I'm assuming they worked this all out.

The SCRAM name is unfortunately a bit of folk etymology and not true

I have seen at least some evidence to suggest it was true, from a college prof who worked at Lawrence Livermore Labs when it mattered, back in the 1950's, early on in the industry. And, the U.S. Navy.

There were a number of terms I heard about in my radiation safety class, a number of nicnames and acronyms you do not often see elsewhere. For example one of the radiacs was referred to as a "cutie pie". It had a large cylinder extending from it (as I recall it was an alpha particle monitor). And of course I learned about SL-1 (the unclassified version), a nasty example of radiation poising for a welder in Argentina to tried to steal an unshielded radiation source for x-raying metal, and (no shit) how to clean up radioactive spills using maxi pads and comet cleanser. Things WERE a bit more innovative in those days, yeah.

So you can expect some odd naming conventions from that time period.. And my time in the U.S. Navy confirmed the SCRAM acronym, where (if I remember correctly, my Nuclear Power school time was in 1981) we had some nice hand-drawn diagrams of the system showing the guy with the axe and the rope, possibly even from classified sources. Then again Admiral Rickover was a bit of a prankster at times, so maybe HE was responsible for it?

[also noted was that they all stayed in the same room with the reactor running for an extended period of time, while radiation alarms were going off in the room warning them to get the hell out - it's who these guys were]

Also in the Navy I read the classified incident report on SL-1 which was required reading, as well as the official 3 Mile Island incident report, and also "Murphy's Law" (that's Admiral RIckover's sense of humor for ya). The classified SL-1 report basically confirmed some of the rumors that were hinted at when I learned about it in college. I guess some details were (literally) too gruesome not to be classified at the time. Of course there were other details that I remember that may be related to things like plant design which may still remain classified so I will not say any of that. And there was a movie that showed before, some maintenance practices, and the aftermath. Some of that has been declassified as I understand it (read the Wikipedia page, you'll see).

So anyway, the rumors around the term SCRAM may not be confirmed because they were classified and never released, or were never written down in the first place. Does not mean it is not true.

in theory you are correct but also there is naturally going to be at least some conversion of U238 into Pu239 in a low enrichment fueled reactor. So recovering Pu239 from spent fuel might be the best direction to take.

The thing about breeders is that they have to have longer "slowing down lengths" for the neutrons which is not so much power-making friendly but fuel-making friendly. So there would have to be some special design considerations with respect to the physics of fuel geometry and a few other things. The very first nuclear reactor on record (not made by accident) was a breeder with carbon moderator.

I would guess that the competing design goals are why we do not already see this being done at scale.

and having a conveyer belt of U238 on one end and Pu239 on the other end is probably less workable than any of us would like, which means frequent shutdowns to harvest fuel made in a breeder.

Another thing to consider is that thermal neutron reactors are a LOT safer and easier to control than fast neutron reactors. What might work best for Pu239 usage is a hybrid fuel where there is a lot of U235, but it is mixed with Pu239. That would make it easier to control.

your snark is appreciated

Since "Bankman-Fraud" aka "Brain-Fried" is likely to go to prison for his loss of billions of dollars in other people's money by way of alleged fraudulent claims, alleged criminal mismanagement, etc. I would think that EXISTING laws and regs are just fine if the bad actors go to prison for allegedly violating them in such an allegedly gross manner.

Some think he might follow the same fate as Epstein. I have to wonder if "knowing where the skeletons are" has anything to do with THIS...

Note: never trust your life savings to an alleged hippy allegedly running an investment business from a multi-million dollar commune in the Bahamas, despite all of the alleged woke virtue signalling he's allegedly doing to convince you, especially when he (allegedly) visibly shakes like a meth-head in a TV interview and (allegedly) goes into a "Talking 'bout my generation" thought+verbal spin trying to explain things...

Re: Java can’t go away, sadly

I mostly use Java for 'droid when I do 'droid.

The Kotlin learning curve is too steep and a waste of my time.

I said the same thing about C-pound (among other things) when it first got the "new shiny" promo from Micros~1. I rejected it, just like I have rejected Kotlin.

Java does the job, does it well, and is familiar.

"the number of queries for C++ is because it is so insanely huge and confusing to most programmers"

My experience has been that JavaScript and Python are like this, mostly because I do not use them every day.

JavaScript has the unfortunate legacy of being (at least the way too many people use it) grossly inefficient on top of that, so when fixing someone else's code I spend quite a bit of time researching how it OUGHT to be done by a competent programmer.

Re: Damn Statistics

well, I've based my own decisions about "learning what lingo" on TIOBE. It seems to be less biased towards ":new, shiny" than would, let's say, a Stack Overflow assessment.

TIOBE is not perfect but it gives you a ballpark idea which is often good enough.

And, it has always (more realistically) scored C-pound much lower than MS propaganda would have you believe.

So yeah if you want a job or starting a new project:

* C / C++ (I consider them similar enough to combine them in my head)

* Java

* Python [though as a scripting lingo is is brilliant, for applications it is cumbersome]

that looks like a cultural reference that search engines aren't helping me with much...

Re: EQUULEUS

might get more efficiency if you can put something in the water that retains more heat, weighs more than pure water, does not gunk things up,l and does not significantly increase the boiling point. That way you get more impulse for the same wattage, and fuel tanks can be smaller.

an alcohol of some kind might do the trick, maybe propanol/isopropyl or heavier...?

Re: Didn't someone previously propose

"Don't Blink"

Re: Next chapter

Bitcoin is kinda like Tulip bulbs being speculated on, and THEN actually being used as currency. Reference to this:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp

(They fell short of actually using them as currency as I understand it)

I avoid it because a) I cannot afford to lose an investment and b) it is SO volatlle and has 2 major drawbacks: it increases in value slowly, and drops in value RAPIDLY.

But some people invest, and some make money, and probably MORE people LOSE money. My bombastic opinion.

Re: "unprecedented"

Become a master criminal by running a successful company so badly that even though you make money, so did everyone else. have no accounting, no business plan. Then claim incompetence so your assets arent totally taken away. That being said if he has loads of offshore accounts everywhere then good luck finding them all.

Reminds me of "The Producers". When it is completely bankrupt, everyone loses their investment, but YOU keep everything you milked out of the company, even though it was a complete failure, YOU win.

and now a chorus of "Springtime for Hitler" sung by a strung-out out-of-time speed-freak hippy named Brain-Fried, who lives in a poly-amorous commune, and his finance officer, also part of the commune, that cannot even do BASIC MATH. Yeah that show is GUARANTEED to fail (for the investors and customers) !!! [I hear the company bought the Bahamas commune for them, for $40M]

(yeah that's 'unprecedented' alright!)

They're gonna put THIS one right at the front of the "Dumb Crook" file!!!

Re: LOL'd at this one

now they are gonna need a "handcuff" emoji to represent where most (if not all) of them are headed...

Re: LOL'd at this one

But... but... but... their ESG score was STELLAR! I mean, VEGAN! Contribute to DEMOCRATS! Climate Change!

And I'm sitting here rolling on the floor laughing over just how comical this all would look if Brain-Fried actually said that...

(while constantly jittering like he did in a video being interviewed by some liberal media guy, like he was strung out on speed)

I hear Brain-Fried is scheduled to make a speech in NYC on 11/30 or thereabouts. I hope he shows up!! "Inspector Zenigata" will be there with a nice new shiny pair of bracelets for him...

Re: Bit klunky, but...

OK you are the captain of a ship. Someone on the bridge starts insulting your personality or ability to command the vessel because of a disagreement, maybe even during a crisis.

What do they call that again... MUTINY? INSUBORDINATION?

Yeah. from the perspective of the CEO, it is like THAT. UNDERMINING the leadership at the top to that extent can damage the company structure in ways you cannot imagine, if you think "feeling stupid" has anything to do with this.

This needs to pass the "shoe on the other foot" test.