Trump's Tech Battle With China Roils Bill Gates Nuclear Venture (wsj.com) 207
Add Bill Gates to the list of executives whose businesses have been ensnared by the Trump administration's battle with China over technology and trade. From a report: The tech tycoon and philanthropist said in an essay posted late last week that a nuclear-energy project in China by a company he co-founded called TerraPower LLC is now unlikely to proceed because of recent changes in U.S. policy toward China [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. That leaves TerraPower, which had been working on the China project for more than three years, scrambling for a new partner and uncertain where it might be able to run a pilot of the nuclear reactor it has been developing, according to company officials.
Mr. Gates, TerraPower's chairman, helped start and fund the Bellevue, Wash., company, which incorporated in 2008, in a long-term bid to make nuclear reactors smaller, less expensive and safer than current nuclear energy sources. The company has been developing something called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses depleted uranium as fuel, something that TerraPower says can improve safety and reduce costs. Regulatory restrictions and limited federal funding made building the facility in the U.S. difficult and led TerraPower to look for partners abroad, Chief Executive Chris Levesque said in an interview.
Mr. Gates, TerraPower's chairman, helped start and fund the Bellevue, Wash., company, which incorporated in 2008, in a long-term bid to make nuclear reactors smaller, less expensive and safer than current nuclear energy sources. The company has been developing something called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses depleted uranium as fuel, something that TerraPower says can improve safety and reduce costs. Regulatory restrictions and limited federal funding made building the facility in the U.S. difficult and led TerraPower to look for partners abroad, Chief Executive Chris Levesque said in an interview.
Try Canada (Score:2)
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Re:Try Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Think you will find even Canada has excessive regulation and the same issue with delusional morons who "think" they are environmentalists that would fight things like this that actually help the environment.
And you would be wrong. They actually license MSRs in Canada and there a lot more empty space to put reactors far away from where anyone would care. Also, keep in mind that Canada is OK with strip-mining huge chunks of their country for oil sands.
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But they are against pipelines to send it anywhere. Instead they load it on trains which crash and blow up small Quebec towns.
I think you are confusing North Dakota with Canada. Its an easy mistake to make but all those protests against the keystone pipeline were in the US, not Canada. Canadian politics are refreshingly intelligent compared to the shit show that is US politics.
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I think you are confusing North Dakota with Canada.
You can not blame your parent for that. After all if you look on an old paper map, they most likely are on the same page sometimes!
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The critical flaw with all these protests is that they fail to see that these companies and governments are going to move that oil one way or the other. By protesting against pipelines, they're just forcing these companies to move it with far less safe and reliable means, which means more spills and accidents per unit moved.
The oil will get moved in one way or another. Fighting all methods of transporting oil is about as useful as putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole.
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On top of reducing cost of delivery and gallons spilled per year.
Re:Try Canada (Score:4, Insightful)
https://www.theglobeandmail.co... [theglobeandmail.com]
There are too many idiots who are know it all environmentalists because they watch a radical Suzuki who only cries about the sky falling (so get rid of people's jobs) with no solutions. And if it's not them, it's paid American 'environmentalists' who come up to protest Canadian pipelines. Sometimes I wonder if the Koch brothers pay them to keep their American interests in front of the Canadian oil interests. The irony is that Canada won't be able to afford to develop green alternatives if it isn't making any money (selling oil).
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I was here in '98, and it was already troll central.
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i came in about the same time too, and sadly it's been troll central. I was looking forward to a legit conversation about this.
Re: Try Canada (Score:4, Informative)
Of course they do.
That's what a President largely is: an excuse. I don't know anyone who doesn't bitch about executive orders depending on whether or not their guy is in office, but they rarely know why and certainly don't understand how limited those are in power. Those aside, what's left? Not much. Appointments? Anything important already has to go through Congress. Treaties? Same. Spending and budget? All and entirely on Congress. Choosing what's on the White House dinner menu? Such power.
The Office of President is a convenient dumpster fire to distract you from the fact that the assholes you elect to Congress for life in many cases are fucking you in the ass without even the courtesy of lube.
DMSR (Score:5, Informative)
The breeding of U-238 is exactly what you do when you make a modern bomb and PUREX (how you separate out the Pu-239 from the Uranium) isn't exactly a secret process as it was developed 70 years ago. It seems safer to just use 50% enriched Uranium (which still require enrichment) and make less waste or ever better use a Th-U fuel cycle as no Pu-239 is produced in that fuel cycle. Anti-proliferation folks often come from foreign policy or military backgrounds and often don't have the science background to understand all the subtleties of nuclear power. So they choose the "more power" approach and often force civilian operations to run in a far more nasty and waste producing way in an effort to ensure nobody ever reprocesses the waste to make a bomb. This is classic risk telescoping as the pollution from the waste is far more likely to endanger lives than this fantasy that couldn't even happen in a movie because the audience wouldn't buy it.
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No easy, free pathway to a hidden mil production line from the side door of an approved export designed nuclear reactor.
That allowed the approved export of turn key reactors to more nations.
That would have allowed more nations to buy into reactors and create more jobs in a few advanced reactor building nations.
China had a very different pathway to nuclear ind
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No easy, free pathway to a hidden mil production line from the side door of an approved export designed nuclear reactor.
Denatured Uranium fueled reactors breed Pu-239. You still have to process it out of the waste but its created. Alternatively, 50% U-235 (medium enriched uranium) still has to be processed to make a bomb too. Neither process is much harder than the other (although PUREX is more complex and creates horrible waste like at Hanford). The Denatured route makes nasty waste that lives for a very long time. The medium enriched fuel makes much less nasty waste and is easier to control in a reactor. Both of thes
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So much effort went into making the waste difficult to work with.
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The idea is that soil samples (embassy workers) and other collected intelligence would detect the production once a nation went for a dual use production run for its mil. So much effort went into making the waste difficult to work with.
Well PUREX plants are much larger but also more low tech. Compare this to the centrifuges that are unique to uranium enrichment. The parts of PUREX are often used in other chemical plants.
U-232 in the Th-U fuel cycle is a much more effective anti-proliferation material than Pu-238 in the U-Pu fuel cycle. U-232 decays through 3 different gamma emitters including one at 75MeV. Pu-238 by contrast emits mostly alpha radiation (can be shielded by sunscreen or your clothes) and has no gamma emitters in its
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All about jobs and reactor sales to nations begging for their own reactors.
The strange part is why would China be buying into this.
They have all the dual use and mil production plants they want.
China wants this method for something.
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It was the only way to get the turn key exports and safe guards. All about jobs and reactor sales to nations begging for their own reactors. The strange part is why would China be buying into this. They have all the dual use and mil production plants they want. China wants this method for something.
China is doing LFTR because its a huge CO2 free source of energy and they have tons of Thorium (as in Liquid Fluoride THORIUM Reactor). They do 90% of the rare earth mining so they have 90% of the extracted Thorium sitting in big piles next to those mines. Plus without the messy western regulations, nuclear becomes really, really cheap. Oh, and the leader of China's LFTR effort said they would get a research reactor up and running by 2040 so I wouldn't hold my breath on the LFTR just yet. Kirk Sorensen
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Wouldn't Pu-240 contamination be too high to use PUREX extracted plutonium from these reactors for weapons?
That's about the reactor, not the enrichment process you use afterwards. If you modified the reactor you could control the isotopes of Pu you made. I don't believe there is a known way to isotopicly enrich Pu so it has to be about the reactor. But there could be some piece of classified tech that does this through.
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Most information I've read states that the amount of Pu-240 present in removed fuel assemblies has to do with the amount of time the fuel was in the reactor - weapons production would use far shorter fuel cycles in order to maximize creation of Pu-239 and minimize the amount of Pu-240. The difference is quite easy to detect based on watching when the operator is refueling the reactor.
This seems likely to me. Also the energies of the free neutrons (the spectrum of the reactor, ie fast vs thermal) which are dependent upon the isotopic ratio of the original fuel and the types of moderators used can impact the creation of different isotopes. However, these are difficult and dangerous aspects of a reactor to change. So you can design a sealed reactor that intentionally creates less Pu-239 but there still will be an optimum time where Pu-239 in the reactor are at its peak. Thanks for the
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Care to explain this statement? Why is it a bad design to rely on having coolant to sustain a nuclear reaction?
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Care to explain this statement? Why is it a bad design to rely on having coolant to sustain a nuclear reaction?
Coolants aren't bad. Coolants that are also moderators are bad. A moderator in a nuclear reactor is the substance that slows down (reduces the energies of) neutrons and increases the change of a fission and improving the neutron economy. Making your coolant, which you increase to slow down the reactors, the same as the moderator, which you remove to slow down the reaction, makes managing the core difficult. That's why people want to use anything but water for a coolant including molten salts (both fluor
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Reactors such as BWR don't use coolant to manage the reaction. The coolant (AFAIK) has to be there to sustain the reaction, but control rods are used to control the reaction.
You are being very pedantic there. While not the first choice of an operator, trying to boost the amount of coolant exposed to the core is an option they have. Also BWRs have huge reserves of water that are designed to pour over the core to cool it in the event of an emergency. Just because you call water a coolant doesn't mean it won't cause the reaction to increase in intensity (this has happened). This is a classic problem with all LWR type reactors and is well studied.
doing gates a kindness (Score:2, Insightful)
Given how the chinese treat IP; isn't this a favor?
Basically they'd build the reactor in china, and within 2 weeks the plans and technical details would be 'appropriated' by the Chinese government.
Basically all that R&D wasted. Just because they aren't shooting at us (yet) doesn't make them an ally, or even a remotely-friendly country.
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Gates isn't a dummy. Off course they will, but he still wants to sell them the product. Better get some money than getting none of it and having your competitors sell it anyway or China buy the startup company out directly through a shell or investment bank.
Re:doing gates a kindness (Score:5, Insightful)
Given how the chinese treat IP; isn't this a favor?
Basically they'd build the reactor in china, and within 2 weeks the plans and technical details would be 'appropriated' by the Chinese government.
Basically all that R&D wasted. Just because they aren't shooting at us (yet) doesn't make them an ally, or even a remotely-friendly country.
On the other hand... Nuclear power isn't really something that the Chinese can build cheaper there for sale in the US; it will be used locally. Their use won't undermine use in the US. Wouldn't better, safer nuclear power be better where ever it's used than older, less-safe designs? In this case, sharing the IP doesn't really sound like a bad idea. Perhaps R&D can be shared for the benefit of everyone rather than hoarded for extra profit by some.
We all live on this planet together.
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You're assuming his goal is profit rather than maximizing usage. This might be comparable to putting a dresser on the curb with a sign that says 'Free' and noone taking it, and then putting a sign that says '$5' and it's gone in minutes.
"If you have a good idea, noone will steal it from you; you'll have to shout it from the rooftops to get anyone to listen."
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That assumes there is no way that they could develop the technology on their own if they wanted to. In practice if it works well they will develop their own version in time (to avoid being reliant on western hardware and software, which they are well aware is probably backdoored by the NSA and can't be trusted).
So you have a choice: refuse to work with them and see your idea die because no-one in the west wants to build it, or get it done in China and okay maybe in the longer term they still do their own ve
Excellent (Score:2, Insightful)
It's fundametally dangerous to transfer tech to an evil totalitarian coomunist regime that has a dictator-for-life and is trying to spread its influence globally.
These CEOs of western tech companies who have been giving China high tech as part of a trade for Chinese slave labor have been setting all the pieces in place that may eventually lead to another World War, just as businessmen both technology and materials with Japan and Germany prior to WWII provided those nations with what they needed to assert th
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
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evil totalitarian coomunist regime that has a dictator-for-life and is trying to spread its influence globally. ... and now the obviously evil Trump.
Most Chineses don't consider their regime evil.
However they consider a Bush Aristocraty evil
Bill Gates got rich in America, selling products to Americans. If he had a shred of decency and loaylty, he would do his research in America with American workers.
In a fucked up society as that of America, he can not find those workers.
To make grand scale changes to th
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Gees, wake up, those times are over. China has caught up and is now developing on it's own. Fuckwit Mao created chaos to feed his insane ego and crippled China, that was last century, the previous millennium, now they are caught up and continuing to develop. All the US can to is cripple China's trade with other countries and of course that would really hugely, extravagantly blow right up in the US governments faces, as allies tell them to go fuck themselves and continue to trade with China. Make no mistake
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This leader of the PRC is there for life.
China Removes Presidential Term Limits, Enabling Xi Jinping To Rule Indefinitely [npr.org]
Before and After (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Before and After (Score:5, Insightful)
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Before Trump: Slashdot and Media: We're worried about China, they don't play fair , steal our tech, and they have horrible human rights and they destroy our jobs in exchange for cheap trinkets. We should restrict ties with them. After Trump: Slashdot and Media: I LOVE CHINA: UNLIMITED OPENNESS OF ALL OUR SECRETS AND EXCHANGE OF EVERYTHING 4EVA!
The online trolling campaigns are taking a break. There is no political election near.
Just wait until the 2020 election comes around. Things will be back to full swing then.
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You have that backwards. Trump was the one who made China the boogyman. Before 2016 they were just the place were cheap crap got manufacturered and not much of a big deal. Now Slashdot loves to blame China for everything and there is strong support for bans on Chinese products and technology.
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Nah, I distinctly remember discussions here about how evil China is during Dubya rule.
Hah, look here. And an article by Jon Katz of all people:
https://features.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
I think I am getting nostalgic. All your base and so on.
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Wrong, infact very very wrong! China has been the bad guy/bad actor for a very long time. Just look at vietnam war. Or this just about trade?
China was the economy boogyman before joining WTO in 2001, and since then it's a bad actor of trade of every nation it trades with. Way more than just currency manipulation. And no one is even talking about the fact that many of the workers are effectively slaves where they live in complexes and given rations.
I blame Regan and Clinton for the trade problems and sellin
I'm fine with this. (Score:2)
Why the fuck is US tech going to benefit China?
Re:I'm fine with this. (Score:4, Informative)
Why the fuck is US tech going to benefit China?
We're not building any here.
China are pursuing nuclear technology. They will do it with our without American tech.
Without China, this American tech will just be whitepapers and simulations.
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Why the fuck is US tech going to benefit China?
We're not building any here.
China are pursuing nuclear technology. They will do it with our without American tech.
Without China, this American tech will just be whitepapers and simulations.
No, we built a MSR in the late 60's called the MSRE [wikipedia.org]. Then we abandoned it for the fast breeder because of politics (clearly not of engineering because fast breeders have failed to deliver). That's the crown jewel we are giving to the Chinese. It worked, it was ready to be scaled up, and it was abandoned and only resurrected purely by accident and given to the Chinese because we can't get the US to license one.
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Because the US foolishly abandoned it 50 years ago? China now has an aggressive LFTR program [wikipedia.org] based upon our own extensive research, which is openly available. Once they put the finishing touches on it, they can lock us out by using our own regressive system for monopolizing ideas. Some make a habit of displacing their feelings onto China, but I'm having a difficult time blaming them for our own spectacular stupidity here. I'd suggest directing that anger at our own government for the stagnation of nuclear technology for several decades, helped by "environmental" groups in an unholy alliance with coal and now natural gas.
TerraPower's TWR didn't work out as envisioned, and is no great loss. Research on the MCFR is more promising, but the chloride chemistry is less developed, and it requires 10-15 times more fissile, which is very expensive. China is already pursing the better option, and have little use for it, nor is it the only fast MSR in development. LFTR needs only a small amount of fissile to start up, which could be affordably extracted [thmsr.nl] from spent fuel, enabling a rapid expansion of nuclear power, while also eliminating the waste "problem".
Exactly...also the Sierra Club has been getting funding from fossil fuels for some time [orionmagazine.org]
The tech wasn't going to fly profitably (Score:5, Insightful)
Soul Brother Number One (Score:2)
Three baby-mamas, doesn't pay his bills and loves KFC. I think the white supremacist Trump supporters may be missing the obvious here.
Dupe (Score:2)
Dupe from a couple days ago:
As China Option Fades, Bill Gates Urges US To Take the Lead in Nuclear Power, For the Good of the Planet [slashdot.org]
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More people should appreciate Bill Gates. He brought us crippleware computers with perpetual spyware and adware and made the masses of low-IQ users love it by having his company lie about it.
Re: Could be (Score:2)
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It used to be 7% or more, but with a political push to reduce it's percentage - it's now down to 4%.
Renewables are 11% according to the graph you posted.
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I suppose that would depend on your definition of "work."
If you accept that your power plants pump poison into the environment as a course of normal operation, then yeah most power plants work awesome. I'd hope that we'd go for "produce electricity without elevated cancer and respiratory disease rates for anyone that happens to be downwind" myself.
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Re:good (Score:5, Informative)
They were less than 10% in 2016 [eia.gov], I don't think we've more than tripled our generation in California. And yes, I live in California. For the US [eia.gov], it's closer to 5%, not 18%.
The GP and you are confusing two different numbers. The GP is talking about total deployment. You are taking about how much power was actually produced. Which illustrates a great point. A 200MW wind farm doesn't equal a 200MW reactor. Solar and wind load factors are in the single digit percents. Nuclear's is north of 90%. So our 5% deployed nuclear generates 9% of our energy, but 18% of deployed renewables generates 5% of the power. Either way the real problem is the batteries needed to handle renewable deployments of more than about 20% energy generation. Without those batteries, its nuclear or natural gas.
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Perhaps the biggest advantages of wind and solar are that you can build them at whatever pace you like (solar even more than wind, of course). Companies don't have to take on so much risk or come up with all the money at once, they can adjust to market conditions and changing tech.
With nuclear, you have to invest a fortune now and pray that that you've correctly predicted what will be needed when it comes online in 5 or 10 years and that it will remain profitable long enough to pay for decommissioning. That
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The problem is that grid stability is compromised [powerengineeringint.com] by renewables.
No, it is not.
For the grid there is no difference when during super bowl at the first add pause a million people walk to the fridge, take something, close it, the fridge starts cooling a minute later versus a sudden cloud over a solar plant or a drop of wind over a wind plant. Except: there is no sudden cloud over a solar plant or a sudden drop in wind. Power plants like that are run on weather/wind/sun/cloud prognosis
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Re:good (Score:4, Informative)
No, you did not get it. ... 1 million times 1 thousand ... that is 1GW.
A fridge uses about 1kW when switched on and actually cooling.
1 million fridges is
1GW is 10 times your 100+ MW generation sources.
Get it now?
America has about 400 million inhabitants. No idea how many fridges you are running and how many people are actually watching the super bowl and running to the fridge at the first add ... idiot.
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The conclusion of the people who did this study is not what you claim is. Instead the strongest statement about renewables is "The noise amplitude tends to increase with the shares of intermittent renewables." But no claim is made that this "compromises grid stability" or even that this is the biggest source of noise in the system. Instead the key finding is that trading has a big impact:
"At first glance, a typical recording of the grid frequency
(Fig. 1) reveals that it coincides extremely well with the
nom
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The strongest statement in the scientific paper is "The noise amplitude tends to increase with the shares of intermittent renewables." One of the key findings is that trading causes relatively huge fluctuations which occur every 15 minutes as trading occurs at this interval. So claiming that "renewables compromise grid stability" is very much exaggerated.
The actual research your linked article refers to is here:
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
ArXiv link is here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.084... [arxiv.org]
https://p [phys.org]
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pumped storage MAY do it (but that's a big no-no for most environmentalists as well)
Pumped storage and batteries are the same. No idea why you think one can do it and one can not.
People actually love pumped storage, as it creates artificial lakes. And that is most everywhere a bonus for wild live and nature.
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First of all, you do not need to flood a valley.
Secondly: I don't live in California.
Obviously pumped storage is not renewable ... are you mixing up pumped storage with a hoover dam?
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Dude. It does destroy ecosystems. See: the 80,000 acre area that is now "Franklin D. Roosevelt Lake" in Washington, created by the Grand Coulee Dam. Or the 54,000 acres that makes up the Lake of the Ozarks.
I'm pretty sure any land organism that lived in those areas previously would consider their habitat destroyed, what with it being underwater and completely unlivable for anything without gills.
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Precisely. Nameplate capacity is irrelevant; generation is everything. And with wind turbine lifespans at half of original claims [telegraph.co.uk], that means the installed base needs to be doubled beyond their original estimates. Battery storage won't get you there, pumped storage MAY do it (but that's a big no-no for most environmentalists as well)... Nuclear really is the only realistic solution for power generation outside of fossil fuels.
No, cost is everything and both wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear in N-Europe for example. In southern Europe Solar is also way more competitive. The problem with nuclear is and always will be the same, it is very expensive and extremely unpopular. Oh, and your source is a 6 year old article in a Tory newspaper? ... Really? At least pick some kind of tech publication next time.
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You also need backup for nuclear because a plant may go offline because of some fault or because it is too hot outside. The truth is that you always have a lot of reserve power plants in a grid and you have large grids to compensate for local loss of power generation. In fact, France often relies on Germany to provide power because many nuclear plants went offline. Germany with a power mix and 40% renewables never relied on electricity from elsewhere.
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https://www.cbc.ca/news/techno... [www.cbc.ca]
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Molten salts have been done many, many times. Not too efficient, and dangerous. Doing small scale at lower temps helps - but also reduces the amount of energy that can be stored. Better to use large, slow-rotating, low-loss, low-cost flywheels [google.com]. Much less dangerous, scalable, easy to use.
Molten salts are not volatile and don't explode. And unless you mess up the chemistry are reasonably safe, they just run at a high temperature. You are correct about the lack of efficiency. If you want efficiency, you would use molten metal or sodium (except sodium explodes). Much better heat carrying capacity and transfer efficiencies of those coolants.
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Regardless what you melt, the efficiency will only be around 40% or lower. (Thermodynamics ... you know, the laws no one grasps)
A fly wheel is 99% efficient ... approaching 100% slowly (General physics, law of conservation of energy ... the most important law, I wonder why no one grasps it on /. either)
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Regardless what you melt, the efficiency will only be around 40% or lower. (Thermodynamics ... you know, the laws no one grasps)
A fly wheel is 99% efficient ... approaching 100% slowly (General physics, law of conservation of energy ... the most important law, I wonder why no one grasps it on /. either)
Then there are billions in profits to be made. What the hell are you doing posting on /.? Found a company that makes grid scale flywheels and get going. Otherwise, it just talk, or perhaps there is some other reason why this doesn't work?
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wow that patent for a 500-50,000 MT flywheel is amazing.
never could I imagine that it could get so big.
but what is interesting to me, that the storage of this would work in places like florida, where solar can give it a boost on startup and increase it before the big commercial demand kicks in, Texas-oklahoma could have this working in the wind zones.
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Do you mean batteries like the ones being developed at MIT? https://www.cbc.ca/news/techno... [www.cbc.ca]
Molten salt only lasts about 6 hours. Malta, a Google spinoff so good they didn't invest in them is doing the same thing. BTW, MSRs use the same stuff to transfer heat from the core to the turbines. Also, those "batteries" have about a 40% efficiency so any energy that goes in, comes out 2 1/2 times more expensive. Some solution. If they do improve that efficiency, we could use that tech in a nuclear reactor though. The research is good, your conclusions about the ramifications of the research, not so
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Nuclear's is north of 90%. So our 5% deployed nuclear generates 9% of our energy, but 18% of deployed renewables generates 5% of the power. Either way the real problem is the batteries needed to handle renewable deployments of more than about 20% energy generation. Without those batteries, its nuclear or natural gas.
And from what would you charge the batteries?
Obviously as long as your renewable contribution to the grid is below base load, "batteries" only make sense in "strange market situations" as in mid
Load factors (Score:2, Informative)
They were less than 10% in 2016 [eia.gov], I don't think we've more than tripled our generation in California. And yes, I live in California. For the US [eia.gov], it's closer to 5%, not 18%.
The GP and you are confusing two different numbers. The GP is talking about total deployment. You are taking about how much power was actually produced. Which illustrates a great point. A 200MW wind farm doesn't equal a 200MW reactor. Solar and wind load factors are in the single digit percents. Nuclear's is north of 90%. So our 5% deployed nuclear generates 9% of our energy, but 18% of deployed renewables generates 5% of the power. Either way the real problem is the batteries needed to handle renewable deployments of more than about 20% energy generation. Without those batteries, its nuclear or natural gas.
Load factors for Wind, Solar and Hydro in the UK in 2017 according to the Digest of UK Energy Statistics published by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
Onshore wind: 28.0%
Solar photovoltaics: 10.7%
Offshore wind: 38.9%
Hydro: 36.5%
The load factor for UK nuclear plants hovered betweeen 65 and 77% and onshore wind in particular beats UK Nuclear on energy prices quite handily, onshore wind even managed to beat Combined Cycle Gas Turbines.
Now please start talking about 'breeder
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The load factor for UK nuclear plants hovered betweeen 65 and 77%
That's because we spent a fuckton of money developing nuclear reactor tech and then at the point where we'd figured it out and could actually roll out mature ones, we decided to junk it all and buy American.
It's the classic British way: spend the money developing innovative new tech then junk it and buy foreign just before we see fruits of the labour. Sometimes we even sell it off cheap, then let someone else sell it back to us for a large pr
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Load factors for Wind, Solar and Hydro in the UK in 2017 according to the Digest of UK Energy Statistics published by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Onshore wind: 28.0% Solar photovoltaics: 10.7% Offshore wind: 38.9% Hydro: 36.5% The load factor for UK nuclear plants hovered betweeen 65 and 77% and onshore wind in particular beats UK Nuclear on energy prices quite handily, onshore wind even managed to beat Combined Cycle Gas Turbines. Now please start talking about 'breeder reactors' I have some choice quotes from the US navy and some scientific publications on those things.
I said capacity factor. You responded with load factor. Capacity factor is when the power is needed, how much is available. Load factor is when the power is available (ie wind is blowing, sun is shining), how much of it do you get...in other words, efficiency. Load factor ignores all the time when solar and wind are not available which is most of the time. Also, I don't like fast spectrum breeder reactors but I do like thermal spectrum breeder reactors. I doubt you know the different between those con
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Wait - You did read hte REASON it was being done in China was because that country has lax regulations.
Honestly, this article is quite disengenuous. What is really happening is that China was not Bill Gates' first choice. Now, because of Trump, Gates has a chance to build his reactors here - because regulations are more sane now than they were just two years ago.
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Who is better?
a) An anti nuclear nimby who nows nothing about it
b) A pro nuclear idiot who knows nothing about it
???
Both vote. Some guys in the b) bracket even get hired ... and there is the problem.
From a risk management point of view: b) is the bigger risk.
Obviously there are two other groups: ... if you would not write so much nonsense about nucle
c) Anti nuclear protagonists who actually know their stuff, like Merkel
d) Pro nuclear protagonists who know their stuff (don't know/remember one in that bracket
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Who is better? a) An anti nuclear nimby who nows nothing about it b) A pro nuclear idiot who knows nothing about it ???
Both vote. Some guys in the b) bracket even get hired ... and there is the problem.
From a risk management point of view: b) is the bigger risk.
Obviously there are two other groups: c) Anti nuclear protagonists who actually know their stuff, like Merkel d) Pro nuclear protagonists who know their stuff (don't know/remember one in that bracket ... if you would not write so much nonsense about nuclear, I perhaps had put you here)
Nice false dichotomy there. I would rather decisions on nuclear power be made by those that understand nuclear power. Since those folks are overwhelmingly pro-nuclear that pretty much says it all.
And Merkel doesn't qualify given the fact that both Germany's energy prices and CO2 outputs have rocketed up under her direction. Her closing of the nuclear plants will probably (indirectly) result in ending her political career. Artificially raising energy prices has all sorts of negative unintended conseque
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Ignorance by the people may enable the opposition, but anti-nuclear groups know better, and are deliberately engaged in a war on nuclear [environmen...ogress.org], funded by and benefiting fossil interests. Nuclear threatens to replace fossil energy entirely, while renewables will continue to depend on it as an increasingly expensive crutch for a family of technologies that can't stand on their own.
For the TL;DR version of that link focusing on a concise presentation of data, see the complete case for nuclear [environmen...ogress.org].
Exactly. Also the Sierra Club took funding from Natural Gas CEOs [time.com]
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People with a 5th grade education.
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I'm in the US, so the answer is not simple or uniform. Every school district sets its own curriculum and so it completely depends on where you went to school. States are starting to assert control over the curriculum with things like "common core" and proficiency tests, but even then you have state-to-state variation. I went to a good school and we had a science curriculum in 5th grade - but that was over 30 years ago and certainly does not speak for everyone. Even at my good school, you would be a stunted