Fusion breakthrough?

[barbos]

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

True. But the idea it to make it secretly, without being bombed by the World Police.

Yes, you make it secretly and then announce having it. After that you are safe from World Police.

 

[bilby]

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

True. But the idea it to make it secretly, without being bombed by the World Police.

Yes, you make it secretly and then announce having it. After that you are safe from World Police.

It's still easier and cheaper to skip the pointless extra steps inherent in building a nuclear power plant. As I already mentioned, literally zero of the world's nuclear weapons states decided to employ this stupid and futile strategy.

It's a fantasy made up from whole cloth by the anti-nuclear power lobby. A bomb program can lead to a power generation program; The opposite never happens, and certainly isn't a problem in need of any kind of solution or preventative measures.

It's not like it's difficult for a nation state to build nuclear weapons if they really want them. North Korea did it, and they're so poor they can barely feed their people, and are fenced in not only in the figurative sense of being subject to severe sanctions, but also in the literal sense of having a border that is very strictly controlled by both their neighbours and their own government.

 

[Bomb#20]

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

True. But the idea it to make it secretly, without being bombed by the World Police.

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is a realistic danger, this gives us all a reason to want to stop rogue non-nuclear states like Iran from building breeder reactors. But it doesn't give us a reason to object to states that already have the bomb also building breeder reactors for power generation. And they'll be a lot cheaper and a lot more effective at slowing global warming than burning carbon while we wait for fusion to become practical.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So Europe needs to be beholden to carbon energy so that Russia remains less of a joke.

 

[bilby]

So Europe needs to be beholden to carbon energy so that Russia remains less of a joke.

Not at all. France has already demonstrated that a modern developed nation can generate all of its electricity from carbon free sources, and the rest of the EU are perfectly capable of following that lead.

Indeed, France did it in the 1980s, using materials and technologies from the 50's '60s and '70s. Repeating the feat should be a doddle, even for the less developed EU nations, today.

All that's missing is the desire to do it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

True. But the idea it to make it secretly, without being bombed by the World Police.

Easier to hide a separate reactor than use a supposedly civilian reactor--you can't clamp down on security too much or you'll have a whole bunch of people who realize it's a bomb program.

 

[barbos]

Any organisation with the capability to make weapons grade plutonium from power reactors already has the capability to build a specialist reactor for making weapons grade plutonium.

True. But the idea it to make it secretly, without being bombed by the World Police.

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is a realistic danger, this gives us all a reason to want to stop rogue non-nuclear states like Iran from building breeder reactors. But it doesn't give us a reason to object to states that already have the bomb also building breeder reactors for power generation. And they'll be a lot cheaper and a lot more effective at slowing global warming than burning carbon while we wait for fusion to become practical.

Nobody forbids them doing it. But countries like Russia and USA want to export their reactors to other countries. Why are we talking about this anyway?
Fission is inherently more dangerous than fusion, that's just a fact.

 

[bilby]

Fission is inherently more dangerous than fusion, that's just a fact.

Everything is inherently more dangerous than an imaginary technology.

As nobody has a working fusion reactor, we cannot possibly know how dangerous they will be, if anyone ever builds one.

 

[Swammerdami]

Fission is inherently more dangerous than fusion, that's just a fact.

Everything is inherently more dangerous than an imaginary technology.

As nobody has a working fusion reactor, we cannot possibly know how dangerous they will be, if anyone ever builds one.

Barbos is correct, I think; and bilby's reply disingenuous.

Carbon-based energy has dangers due to the need to mine and transport large quantities of fuel; and for CO2 pollution.
Wind, solar and other "renewables" pose problems due to the large amounts of real estate and materials required.
The alleged danger of fission is related to the large quantities of hot radioactive substances.

But is there ANY reason to think any fusion energy in imagination now will be dangerous? H-bombs aren't good, but if that level of containment becomes viable, designers will be laughing their way ... safely ... to the bank.

 

[steve_bank]

Radiation safety aside a fission plant is not much different than a fossil plant. Instead of burning coal the heat source is a hot pile of radioactive material. An extra heat exchanger stage is needed to isolate the radioactive core working fluid.

Fusion is not so simple. There is an old saying I am familiar with 'it is easy to make one of something'.

Scaling up test fusion reactors to the point a commercial plant can be duplicated is well into the future if at all possible. I'd say the costs are open ended and unpredictable.

Nuclear is still the best alternative coupled with renewables.

I know little of the details of the physcs, but my guess is part of it is a controlability problem. A math problem amd a sensing problem. An algorithm for a smooth stable control system may not be possible. Not all systems are controllable.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Radiation safety aside a fission plant is not much different than a fossil plant. Instead of burning coal the heat source is a hot pile of radioactive material. An extra heat exchanger stage is needed to isolate the radioactive core working fluid.

There's one fundamental issue with fission plants, though: They lack a true off switch. You hit the SCRAM button and the reactor output drops to 3%, not 0%. You need to maintain a working cooling system or that 3% will cause your reactor to Fukushima.

 

[bilby]

Fission is inherently more dangerous than fusion, that's just a fact.

Everything is inherently more dangerous than an imaginary technology.

As nobody has a working fusion reactor, we cannot possibly know how dangerous they will be, if anyone ever builds one.

Barbos is correct, I think; and bilby's reply disingenuous.

Carbon-based energy has dangers due to the need to mine and transport large quantities of fuel; and for CO2 pollution.
Wind, solar and other "renewables" pose problems due to the large amounts of real estate and materials required.
The alleged danger of fission is related to the large quantities of hot radioactive substances.

But is there ANY reason to think any fusion energy in imagination now will be dangerous? H-bombs aren't good, but if that level of containment becomes viable, designers will be laughing their way ... safely ... to the bank.

It's literally impossible to predict how dangerous a given technology will be, as it's completely dependent upon the implementation.

It's possible to make almost any technology arbitrarily dangerous.

Dangerous (or safe) is simply not something you can talk about in absolute terms; It's entirely relative - A is not dangerous, while B is safe, but A may well be safer than B.

As implemented in the real world, the safest way to generate electricity is nuclear fission. Onshore wind is roughly equally safe, and all the various "renewables" apart from hydroelectricity are dramatically safer than any of the fossil fuel technologies, even when we disregard any dangers arising from carbon dioxide emissions.

It's literally impossible to discuss how dangerous or safe a technology is without reference to a specific implementation, or to the average of all implementations in a particular class. And even then, safety is not absolute, but relative to some benchmark - typically to the average of all current practices, ie "safe, in comparison to how we currently achieve our objective".

A fusion reactor that requires considerable routine work at height (for example) could easily be more dangerous by an order of magnitude than any currently used fission reactor. It's unlikely to be as dangerous as coal power or hydroelectric power, but that really does depend on the details - which are, necessarily, unknowable without a detailed design to analyse.

Risk assessment is massively complex and difficult, poorly understood by almost everyone, and (sadly) an absolute magnet for Dunning-Kruger - everyone is utterly shit at estimating risk, while almost everyone also believes themselves to be excellent and intuitive at it.

Hence the massive casualties in all industries prior to the introduction of health and safety legislation, and the ongoing high numbers of deaths and injuries in workplaces despite such legislation.

 

[bilby]

Radiation safety aside a fission plant is not much different than a fossil plant.

Yes, it is. Because a fission plant requires an utterly minuscule quantity of fuel (and mining fuel is dangerous work, as is the business of adding fuel to a currently operating plant, which most fission plants don't need to do); and produces an equally minuscule quantity of waste (sufficiently small that it can be managed in its entirety for as long as it remains hazardous, rather than being dumped on the environment).

As I mentioned above, risk assessment is an absolute hotbed of such Dunning-Kruger nonsense as this. It sounds truthy, and may even appear obvious, but it's also complete bollocks.

 

[bilby]

Radiation safety aside a fission plant is not much different than a fossil plant. Instead of burning coal the heat source is a hot pile of radioactive material. An extra heat exchanger stage is needed to isolate the radioactive core working fluid.

There's one fundamental issue with fission plants, though: They lack a true off switch. You hit the SCRAM button and the reactor output drops to 3%, not 0%. You need to maintain a working cooling system or that 3% will cause your reactor to Fukushima.

That's true.

Although given that the death toll at Fukushima was somewhere between zero and one; That it required an unprecedented geological event to cause the issue; And that it was a 1960s design that failed, while the 1980's design literally right next door suffered no such problem, that's not as serious a failing as most people reading your post would imagine.

Meltdowns aren't particularly dangerous, but they are very expensive, which is why all plants built since the 1970s are well designed to prevent them; and why a move to liquid fuels would be a smart thing to do.

Fukushima wasn't an industrial disaster. It was a public relations disaster, in the wider context of a massive natural disaster. Few industries on the Japanese coast weathered the tsunami anywhere close to as well as the nuclear power industry. But everyone remembers watching explosions at Fukushima on TV, long after they've forgotten about the earthquake and tsunami that killed 15,899 people, or at least conflated it in their mind with similar events, such as the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

Humans are utterly shit at risk assessment. They tend to replace it with fear of technology and human endeavour; Hence the fear of nuclear power, and the lack of fear of being near the shoreline. Living near a nuclear reactor is negatively dangerous - it actually reduces your total risk of death or injury. Living near the beach, or in a city, is massively more hazardous. But the appeal to nature fallacy (unlike a worrying proportion of its adherents) just will not die.

 

[steve_bank]

Radiation safety aside a fission plant is not much different than a fossil plant. Instead of burning coal the heat source is a hot pile of radioactive material. An extra heat exchanger stage is needed to isolate the radioactive core working fluid.

There's one fundamental issue with fission plants, though: They lack a true off switch. You hit the SCRAM button and the reactor output drops to 3%, not 0%. You need to maintain a working cooling system or that 3% will cause your reactor to Fukushima.

Fukishima was the result of mutiple issues. In an unprecedented cultural revelation the Japanese government said the traditional Japanese hierarchical social stricture prohibited fast action on the scene. Decisions had to up the chin of command. I had experiencee dealing with a major Japanese company on a quality issue. Endless oblique discussion and foreplay. Never direct.

The plant was nor adequately designed for the coastal position.

Three Mile Island was a combination of a faulty gauge and human error. Today it is all automated.

Technology advances through failures, no one looking forward can see all ends. Aviation is a good example. As failures occured in flight going back to the start of commercial flights safety improved. A good example is the 50s British Comet. Cyclic pressurization and depressurization caused stress fractures. No one saw it coming.

Back in the 80s I saw a Boeing fuselage on a large test stand our doors. The fuselage was pressurized and depressurized while the fuselage was twisted and the wins bent up and down. Testing as the result of the history of aviation failures.

The problem with nuclear power is there are not many that are built and they all tend to differ.

I still do not see how a fusion reactor can have a catastrophic event that can affect the surrounding area.

 

[Bomb#20]

Fission is inherently more dangerous than fusion, that's just a fact.

Barbos is correct, I think; ...
Carbon-based energy has dangers due to the need to mine and transport large quantities of fuel; and for CO2 pollution. ...
The alleged danger of fission is related to the large quantities of hot radioactive substances.

But is there ANY reason to think any fusion energy in imagination now will be dangerous?

Compared to carbon? Only if some idiot politician forces us to switch to it before it's economically viable and causes an energy-crisis-fueled depression. Depressions kill people.

But compared to fission? Certainly. The fusion energy in imagination now is more dangerous than fission because fusion comes with whatever its own dangers are, however small, PLUS all the dangers of fission, because you need a fission reactor to make a fusion reactor work, because the fusion energy in imagination now uses tritium for fuel.

 

[Worldtraveller]

If more people knew how to do a proper FMECA, or even understand one that was done by professionals that DO know what they're doing, the world would be a better place.

 

[steve_bank]

I was a reliability engineer in a reprieves incarnation.

It is not as easy as you might think.

 

[Elixir]

I need a reprieves incarnation.

 

[Bomb#20]

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is a realistic danger, this gives us all a reason to want to stop rogue non-nuclear states like Iran from building breeder reactors. But it doesn't give us a reason to object to states that already have the bomb also building breeder reactors for power generation. ...

Nobody forbids them doing it. But countries like Russia and USA want to export their reactors to other countries. Why are we talking about this anyway? ...

We're talking about it because back in post #77 you raised the issue of us running out of U-235 some time between 700 million years from now and 6 billion.