One Company's Plan to Sink Nuclear Reactors Deep Underground (ieee.org) 113
Long-time Slashdot reader jenningsthecat shared this article from IEEE Spectrum:
By dropping a nuclear reactor 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) underground, Deep Fission aims to use the weight of a billion tons of rock and water as a natural containment system comparable to concrete domes and cooling towers. With the fission reaction occurring far below the surface, steam can safely circulate in a closed loop to generate power.
The California-based startup announced in October that prospective customers had signed non-binding letters of intent for 12.5 gigawatts of power involving data center developers, industrial parks, and other (mostly undisclosed) strategic partners, with initial sites under consideration in Kansas, Texas, and Utah... The company says its modular approach allows multiple 15-megawatt reactors to be clustered on a single site: A block of 10 would total 150 MW, and Deep Fission claims that larger groupings could scale to 1.5 GW. Deep Fission claims that using geological depth as containment could make nuclear energy cheaper, safer, and deployable in months at a fraction of a conventional plant's footprint...
The company aims to finalize its reactor design and confirm the pilot site in the coming months. [Company founder Liz] Muller says the plan is to drill the borehole, lower the canister, load the fuel, and bring the reactor to criticality underground in 2026. Sites in Utah, Texas, and Kansas are among the leading candidates for the first commercial-scale projects, which could begin construction in 2027 or 2028, depending on the speed of DOE and NRC approvals. Deep Fission expects to start manufacturing components for the first unit in 2026 and does not anticipate major bottlenecks aside from typical long-lead items.
In short "The same oil and gas drilling techniques that reliably reach kilometer-deep wells can be adapted to host nuclear reactors..." the article points out. Their design would also streamline construction, since "Locating the reactors under a deep water column subjects them to roughly 160 atmospheres of pressure — the same conditions maintained inside a conventional nuclear reactor — which forms a natural seal to keep any radioactive coolant or steam contained at depth, preventing leaks from reaching the surface."
Other interesting points from the article:
The California-based startup announced in October that prospective customers had signed non-binding letters of intent for 12.5 gigawatts of power involving data center developers, industrial parks, and other (mostly undisclosed) strategic partners, with initial sites under consideration in Kansas, Texas, and Utah... The company says its modular approach allows multiple 15-megawatt reactors to be clustered on a single site: A block of 10 would total 150 MW, and Deep Fission claims that larger groupings could scale to 1.5 GW. Deep Fission claims that using geological depth as containment could make nuclear energy cheaper, safer, and deployable in months at a fraction of a conventional plant's footprint...
The company aims to finalize its reactor design and confirm the pilot site in the coming months. [Company founder Liz] Muller says the plan is to drill the borehole, lower the canister, load the fuel, and bring the reactor to criticality underground in 2026. Sites in Utah, Texas, and Kansas are among the leading candidates for the first commercial-scale projects, which could begin construction in 2027 or 2028, depending on the speed of DOE and NRC approvals. Deep Fission expects to start manufacturing components for the first unit in 2026 and does not anticipate major bottlenecks aside from typical long-lead items.
In short "The same oil and gas drilling techniques that reliably reach kilometer-deep wells can be adapted to host nuclear reactors..." the article points out. Their design would also streamline construction, since "Locating the reactors under a deep water column subjects them to roughly 160 atmospheres of pressure — the same conditions maintained inside a conventional nuclear reactor — which forms a natural seal to keep any radioactive coolant or steam contained at depth, preventing leaks from reaching the surface."
Other interesting points from the article:
- They plan on operating and controlling the reactor remotely from the surface.
- Company founder Muller says if an earthquake ever disrupted the site, "you seal it off at the bottom of the borehole, plug up the borehole, and you have your waste in safe disposal."
- For waste management, the company "is eyeing deep geological disposal in the very borehole systems they deploy for their reactors."
- "The company claims it can cut overall costs by 70 to 80 percent compared with full-scale nuclear plants."
"Among its competition are projects like TerraPower's Natrium, notes
the tech news site Hackaday, saying TerraPower's fast neutron reactors "are already under construction and offer much more power per reactor, along with Natrium in particular also providing built-in grid-level storage.
"One thing is definitely for certain..." they add. "The commercial power sector in the US has stopped being mind-numbingly boring."
No safety needed (Score:2)
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Re: No safety needed (Score:5, Insightful)
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I, for one, have complete confidence in corporate industry's ability and willingness to respect the environment and the safety of the general public.
=Smidge= /s
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Re: No safety needed (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have the authority to arbitrarily decide where to put fracking wells either. Or mines, or oil rigs, or chemical factories...
In fact they technically get permits to do basically everything everything they do. Or at least that used to be the case when the EPA actually meant something. Never stopped them from completely fucking everything up to save money though, did it? And I bet you know it.
I guarantee that if any of these get built and fails, the way the public finds out about it is someone noticing a spike in cancer rates.
=Smidge=
Geothermal power with extra steps (Score:2)
... and risks!
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Probably because there are other implications such as ground water contamination in the event of a serious meltdown?
I don't know why these so-called "scientists" and "engineers" don't check with Slashdot before spending so much time working on these ideas. I'll bet the never even occurred to them!
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Re: No safety needed (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s kind of like having Deep Water, on the horizon.
If thereâ(TM)s a problem âoejust seal it offâ.
Weâ(TM)ll have Slum Burger check the concrete casing and declare that it is âoejust greatâ, then leave.
Then when there is a problemâ"magenta warning lights, flames, mutated earthworms coming out of the ground, a spokes hole can go on tv and declare that itâ(TM)s âoeunder controlâ.
Then executives can go out on their yachts and declare âoewell this h
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This is not a scientific or an engineering endeavour, this is an attempt to get on the "ENARGAY FOR THE HEY-AYE" financial bandwagon. Quite obviously nothing will come out of it in the time frame of the "AI" bubble except some money changing hands.
I'm no nuclear engineer (Score:5, Insightful)
Even then I don't know if you could pull something like this off. This sounds like a scam.
Keep in mind if you are in North America then nuclear is basically a scam right now anyway unless you're restarting an old reactor. That's because the investment cost for wind and solar even with the current administration interfering with your deployment is substantially cheaper than any nuclear reactor you could possibly build, again even with the administration looking the other way on safety.
Japan might have a reason to fire up their nuclear reactors because they have so little viable land. But the one thing America has a fuckload of is land. So it just doesn't make economic sense to build a nuclear reactor in America.
I'm not quite sure why so many people over 50 though are so hung up on nuclear. I guess it was the future when you were a kid and it's a future that never happened so I think a lot of old farts are obsessed with it. Libertarian types seem to be really really into nuclear too and I don't understand why. Maybe the small footprint size of the reactors seems more individualistic? I don't know but it's all kind of pointless when we can just build out solar or wind installations.
Re:I'm no nuclear engineer (Score:5, Insightful)
The California-based startup announced in October that prospective customers had signed non-binding letters of intent
Startup = Scam company looking to make some quick money for the CEO and then disappear.
Non-binding letters of intent = Never going to happen.
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They are aiming so low anyway. Very small reactors, low output power, and they appear to have a lifetime of a few years because they don't have a plan to bring them up and refuel them. SMRs go through fuel faster than larger reactors, one of the reasons why they produce more waste.
In summary they are planning to use an untested new technology that nobody has managed to make a working prototype of, and bury it in a harsh environment where they can't fix any issues that arise, all to power an AI datacentre wh
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I mean... that's how we've built all the great things throughout history, right? Old slavery. Modern slavery... All the same to me.
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But the cost of building this installation sounds like it would be prohibitive ...
More expensive, sure, but probably way less risky than "dropping" it. :-)
By dropping a nuclear reactor 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) underground ...
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Re: Oh and anyway walkable cities are the only (Score:2)
"buildings won't be moved and created just because of your romantic notions. Juvenile delusions."
You just replied to a well known bot some clown has created by training a LLM on rsilvergun's posts. And you did it by saying something really stupid. Nice work there, sport.
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Even then I don't know if you could pull something like this off. This sounds like a scam.
It is an otherwise unnecessary solution to people like you.
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Wind and solar are only less expensive if you can actually build them. The current president has made it clear that he will not allow any new large wind or solar projects in the USA. Given the long running tendency of the GOP to swing even further to the extreme right, and the Democratic party's long history of capitulating to the GOP, it makes little sense for businesses to make long-term plans around renewable resources. Even if Trump leaves office and is voted out by a Democrat he might be replaced by so
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But the cost of building this installation sounds like it would be prohibitive
I didn't even get to build costs. In my foolish youth, I worked off shore oil rigs doing wireline. Shoving a nuclear reactor down a 3.5"-5" pipe 8,000 to 22,500 feet deep will prove to be an interesting engineering challenge, not to mention "Dancin' with Kelly". (The main rotating drilling platform that makes the pipe rotate and the drill head bite.) The technology to drift a hole more than a 20 meters in diameter vertically down half a mile or more is not anything I've read about. Is it even possible?
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Shoving a nuclear reactor down a 3.5"-5" pipe 8,000 to 22,500 feet deep will prove to be an interesting engineering challenge, not to mention "Dancin' with Kelly". (The main rotating drilling platform that makes the pipe rotate and the drill head bite.) The technology to drift a hole more than a 20 meters in diameter vertically down half a mile or more is not anything I've read about. Is it even possible?
The article indicates 0.75 m diameter. So, yeah, larger than many bore holes, but not 20 m, either.
Actually, 0.75 m diameter and ~1 mile depth is pretty close to the first segment of the Macondo well [nationalacademies.org] that resulted in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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The article indicates 0.75 m diameter.
Thank you, I missed that in the article when my mind boggled at using a bore hole.
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But the cost of building this installation sounds like it would be prohibitive unless you're using slave labor and letting a lot of those slaves die.
So, you are saying that it is possible?
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But the cost of building this installation sounds like it would be prohibitive unless you're using slave labor and letting a lot of those slaves die.
I'm not sure why you'd say this. From the summary and article, they're using the same gear and techniques we use for oil drilling. I'm not aware of any slavery or dead slaves in the oil and gas drilling industry. It's not like they are proposing hollowing out a giant cavern one mile down and building a conventional power plant there. The proposal, which sounds incredible, is to build something nine meters long and 75 cm wide.
I will note we have conventional mineral mines which are deeper than this. The Mpon
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But the cost of building this installation sounds like it would be prohibitive unless you're using slave labor and letting a lot of those slaves die.
How would you even use slaves in drilling a kilometers-deep borehole?
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After Solyndra Loss, U.S. Energy Loan Program Turning A Profit [npr.org]
Don't matter Trump will manage to screw (Score:1)
It up. Of course it did it's always that they underestimated just how fucking crazy and senile Trump is. They also underestimated how much Putin is willing to murder and hurt and kill his own population for his stupid boyhood dreams of imperial America. Because of that they got caught flat footed. They could turn to nuclear but they don't trust their private sector to do it safely after Fukushima and they don't trust their voters to keep it in the hands of the government. All that is a political problem not
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Wind and solar have been doing base power (Score:2)
There really is no economic case to be made for nuclear power in America. The only reason we may see any new nuclear energy come online is people bringing up old plants that got shut down because AI has so much money right now.
Which isn't a good thing. I mean we're combining a weak regulatory environm
I googled the Spain outage (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a classic case of not spending the money to keep infrastructure of to date in order to prevent disasters. The basic problem is that nobody ever gets a pat on the back for stopping a disaster they get it for the cleanup afterwards...
Put another way nobody likes spending money on preventative maintenance.
Re: I'm no nuclear engineer (Score:5, Informative)
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With a normal power system made up of spinning generators and spinning steam turbines, you have a built-in "flywheel" effect that smooths out those surges, which gives you time to do things like back off the power a bit.
Solar and wind don't have that without spending a LOT of money for extra batteries and flywheel storage - which kills the economics of solar and wind.
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With a normal power system made up of spinning generators and spinning steam turbines, you have a built-in "flywheel" effect that smooths out those surges, which gives you time to do things like back off the power a bit.
That is simply false. Firstly "flywheel" effects are far superior with grid forming inverters than rotating machinery. It's why batteries are currently overtaking traditional rotating peaking plants in the role of stabilising the grid (not actually providing storage for the night). Secondly solar can react far better to changes in the grid for load shedding.
The problem in Spain had nothing to do with the actual grid makeup, it was exclusively regulatory failure. The Solar / Wind were not asked to be involve
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Just keep digging (Score:5, Insightful)
Dig a bit deeper and you can save money by skipping the nuclear-reactor part; just heat the water for your steam turbines with the geothermal heat that's already present down there.
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Re:Just keep digging (Score:5, Informative)
A mile down is nearly deep to have enough geothermal power to boil water just about anywhere on earth. If you can make it to 2 miles you would easily be over 100C.
Re:Just keep digging (Score:4, Interesting)
Further, you don't have to have the heart of the geothermal power plant buried that deep. All you need is pipes circulating water to that depth, the power plant can remain on the surface for easier maintenance and construction.
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While you're right you're missing something important on the other end of the pipe. 100C steam is great for making tea but you cannot generate power from it. You need pressure. Pressure changes the boiling point.
At horrendously inefficient turbine may only just provide a limited amount of energy at around 160C. But typically you want FAR higher than that. For practical reasons you want a large power plant to run a turbine with >150bar saturated steam. Ideally to actually get some actual efficiency in you
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Alternatives, you don't have to have pressure at all. You can make electricity using only the temperature differential.
You just need a lot more holes to produce grid scale energy.
Maintenance? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Maintenance? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is burying anything. They are lowering something under a water pressure column. The same way you get it down you get it up: winch and cable.
Is this oversimplified? Could be, but that is literally in their marketing materials discussing maintenance.
Honestly their bigger problem is cost. Combine the expense of nuclear, with the added expensive of horrendously small economies of scale building small reactors, and add the expense of a geological work and you've made the most expensive form of power generation even more expensive. This project is just as dumb as all SMR projects.
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That's because the project's value is political, not economic. Yes, generating power by digging a mile-deep hole, filling it with water, and running nuclear reactor at the bottom of it is likely to be crazy expensive and have all kinds of environmental challenges.
But what you have to understand is that the American political system is a zero-sum game and Democrats put their chips on solar, wind, and other renewables. Republicans put theirs on coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear.
Solar and Wind have proved
Re: Maintenance? (Score:2)
Are we starting a nuclear bubble now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I appreciate the efforts of some of these new nuclear companies but this is starting to feel like VC bait, there's all of sudden more cheap money flowing and everyone is after it no matter how impractical the idea.
I get the idea but we have enough good locations and enough problems to sort out building reactors above ground before we start building them a mile underground.
"Hey, what are the two most expensive infrastructure projects currently available? Deep tunnels and nuclear reactors. Well chocolate and peanut butter go together, why not those?!"
Fuck it here's an idea, just build reactors on the bottom of the sea floor. Now give me money you venture capital dopes.
Also I've always thought there was GenIV reactor concepts for this type of "bury it and forget it" system already, the Lead Cooled Fast Reactor [wikipedia.org]
Shenanigans (Score:3)
Considering any kind of nuclear plant that we currently use requires daily maintenance, there are a lot of pieces to break not to mention fuel cycling, this is completely spurious.
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Well false, and covered.
Firstly no, nuclear plants do not require daily maintenance. In fact the core / steam loops are largely maintenance free outside of planned shutdowns years in advance. Maintenance is usually only carried out every 24 months.
As to how, it's not exactly rocket surgery. This proposal just lowers two components to the bottom of a hole in a water column, just shut it down, cool it off (like you would do with a normal one), and then all you've got is the extra hour or so it takes to winch
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Well false, and covered.
Firstly no, nuclear plants do not require daily maintenance. In fact the core / steam loops are largely maintenance free outside of planned shutdowns years in advance. Maintenance is usually only carried out every 24 months.
They actually do require frequent routine maintenance, from dealing with everything from packing leaks, checking unusual equipment readings, etc. There is a reason someone is walking around secondary and taking readings and checking equipment. Having to shut it down every time would really impact its output.
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No they do not. Many secondary parts of reactors may require this, but nuclear reactors cores and turbines have little maintenance overall. But even then I don't think that's where your understanding is wrong...
There is a reason someone is walking around secondary and taking readings and checking equipment.
Yes there is. Reactor fleets being largely 40+ years old mean we are still operating them with the technology of the day, the designs of the day and the operational requirements of the day. Much like people run around old oil platforms reading gauges and dials as well.
That's however not at all relate
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That's however not at all related to what we are building these days and there's little to no walking around or checking anything. A large portion of modern process design is reducing the need to read anything. Sensors are cheap. Data recording is cheap. Everything is digital. For a project it now costs almost as little to install a wireless pressure gauge than it does a physical one (same for every other process measurement). For a greenfield construction the cost of wiring is borderline irrelevant too so even wired equipment costs little more.
Certainly sensor technology has improved with modern designs, but the notion you can rely on sensors alone is wrong, and dangerous, IMHO. Sensor fail, power is lost, etc.; all of which will require an operator to check. Even with advanced sensor technology, there are things that indicate problems that sensors will not pick up. Even something as a valve failing to operate, developing a packing leak, or its position indicator giving a false reading will need an operator to check. If you 'bury' the reactor
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Well false, and covered.
Firstly no, nuclear plants do not require daily maintenance. In fact the core / steam loops are largely maintenance free outside of planned shutdowns years in advance. Maintenance is usually only carried out every 24 months.
As to how, it's not exactly rocket surgery. This proposal just lowers two components to the bottom of a hole in a water column, just shut it down, cool it off (like you would do with a normal one), and then all you've got is the extra hour or so it takes to winch the thing up to the surface. It's not in any way buried or sealed down there.
I'm not talking maintenance of the actual reactor. I'm talking dials, valves, switches, even light bulbs, sensors, data collectors, etc. etc. And yes, that kind of stuff is on the daily "to fix" list. These are big complicated machines. You don't drop it in the ground and forget about it. They said they were going to run them remotely, which is really what I call shenanigans. Sure, you can put a couple of PCs anywhere in the world and "remotely control" any reactor, but you need access to all the pipi
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You're assuming two things: a) that they exist, and b) that they require maintenance. Modern process design reduces manual switches and dials to be simple electronic sensors read remotely. Modern equipment is insanely reliable, and a steam raising facility is an incredibly simple process to get right from a reliability point of view. And for random faults, well that's what redundancy in design is for.
These aren't new problems by the way. We have been building things and been putting them in worse conditions
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Well false, and covered.
Firstly no, nuclear plants do not require daily maintenance. In fact the core / steam loops are largely maintenance free outside of planned shutdowns years in advance. Maintenance is usually only carried out every 24 months.
As to how, it's not exactly rocket surgery. This proposal just lowers two components to the bottom of a hole in a water column, just shut it down, cool it off (like you would do with a normal one), and then all you've got is the extra hour or so it takes to winch the thing up to the surface. It's not in any way buried or sealed down there.
I'm not talking maintenance of the actual reactor. I'm talking dials, valves, switches, even light bulbs, sensors, data collectors, etc. etc. And yes, that kind of stuff is on the daily "to fix" list. These are big complicated machines. You don't drop it in the ground and forget about it. They said they were going to run them remotely, which is really what I call shenanigans. Sure, you can put a couple of PCs anywhere in the world and "remotely control" any reactor, but you need access to all the piping, wiring, etc. and that means a big crew down under the ground.with the reactor.
I think all the maintenance-required parts you're talking about are where the heat is transformed into electricity, plus the safety-related monitoring of the core. With this design, it seems like all of the turbines, etc. will be at the surface, where they can be easily maintained, while the safety-related stuff just isn't an issue. Rather than designing a core that can be controlled and ramped up and down, with this system you'd designed the core to just operate at a continuous steady state for its opera
The Meg 3 (Score:2)
The return of a giant goldfish.
Great thinking... (Score:4, Insightful)
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So... irreversibly irradiating our groundwater supply, but with more steps.
Do ... you have even the slightest idea what you mean by that, lol?
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Do ... you have even the slightest idea what you mean by that, lol?
Oh look, a one-issue sock puppet has shown up to Charlie Kirk the discussion.
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So... irreversibly irradiating our groundwater supply, but with more steps.
Just giving the China Syndrome a head start, that's all :)
The real plan (Score:2)
Such BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Digging is expensive.
Nuclear hardware is expensive.
Getting an intact reactor into the bottom of a hole that deep will be prohibitively expensive and difficult.
Groundwater can go more than a mile deep.
If something breaks, repairs will be almost impossible and prohibitively expensive.
I can understand some of the arguments for nuclear. However, this is just sheer idiocy.
A less stupid version of this would be installing a nuclear plant deep in a decommissioned mine, perhaps one under a mountain. Still doesn't seem very smart, though.
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Getting an intact reactor into the bottom of a hole that deep will be prohibitively expensive and difficult.
Actually this will be the easy part. They are talking about tiny modular reactors. It's not exactly complex to drill a 30" hole and it's not exactly complex to hook a gizmo to a winch capable of lowing something 1 mile. We actually have mining elevators that lift and lower workers continuously all day every day that are longer, deeper, and physically larger than this.
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So then the hard part is creating the reactors which don't exist, as usual. It's a weakness shared by literally every proposed SMR project.
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Indeed. Literally every SMR project is burying that lead. "We can put them in ships." "We can put them on the back of buildings." "We can put them in the bottom of a 1mile deep hole."
No one every points out the "them" here doesn't exist.
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No one every points out the "them" here doesn't exist.
Probably they are tired of people's stupid fucking responses. This is approximately the first time I've pointed that out without getting downmodded, and it's not too late for that to happen either. Only one of these proposed reactors has received type approval and then NuScale decided not to build one because it wouldn't be profitable even if someone else split the costs with them [eenews.net]. My only question is, are the people I see frothing for SMRs invested in the scams, or just so dazzled by promises of shiny shit
oh look (Score:2)
Some bitch came along and down modded my last three comments again. What a shock. It's too bad slashdot is now anti fact and anti science.
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A reactor that fits into a 30" bore? How much energy will it produce? 1 kW?
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That's literally what they are talking about. A small SMR generating less power than a single wind turbine, dropped in the bottom of a 30" wide hole.
The problem here isn't digging the hole, it's that no one has built an SMR the size they are proposing, and that the economics are fucking horrendous. They buried the lead a bit in TFS. For the 1.5GW "groupings" they were literally talking about drilling 100 of these holes next to each other.
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This just gets dumber and dumber. There ARE nuclear power generators that can fit into a 30" bore, but they're expensive as hell, made for spacecraft. It would take so many to make a decent amount of power. So they put them in the bores and stack them 50 deep... This is just such a dumb idea.
Containment vessel? (Score:2)
I'm not clear on the justification for siting these things a mile underground. The article mentions "a natural containment system comparable to concrete domes and cooling towers" but I'm not seeing the other SMR projects talk about building large above-ground containment vessels and cooling towers. And speaking of which, the company website describes this as;
"The heat produced is transferred to a steam generator at depth to boil water, and the non-radioactive steam rises rapidly to the surface, where a stan
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What ?!? (Score:2)
Who wrote this never looked at the borehole diameter of an oil well...
Aerating the Earth? (Score:2)
Isn't this the same thing as aerating your lawn? Pull out plugs of dirt so the soil loosens up. Between digging out holes for nuclear reactors to digging out holes next to a volcano to use its heat, aren't we loosening tectonic plates by relieving pressure?
Adapted? (Score:3)
"The same oil and gas drilling techniques that reliably reach kilometer-deep wells can be adapted to host nuclear reactors..."
The last time I looked, oil and gas drilling was done with strings of pipe a few inches in diameter. Unless they're proposing constructing everything in a ship-in-a-bottle fashion, the bore-hole is going to need to be more like a mine-shaft - which is certainly doable, but is not going to be nearly as easy or cheap as they claim.
As well as the reactors, they've also got to get the heat-exchangers, turbines and generators down there too - all of which will require regular maintenance.
Oh, and then it's all got to be connected together.
Finally, they've got to have mile-long cables to bring the power to the surface - which need to be capable of supporting their own weight when strung vertically.
I suspect they're going to burn through a whole load of VC/investor cash before quietly folding and moving on to the next grift/scam/exciting project.
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The whole thing is an obvious scam. Hence details do not matter.
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The last time I looked, oil and gas drilling was done with strings of pipe a few inches in diameter.
Firstly, no they aren't. The final drill pipe may be a few inches in diameter, because that is all that's needed, but the initial hole is actually quite wide often wider than 1m. This allows the drillers to create stacked casings to handle the pressure of the oil field. You only see the few inches drill pipe, or the top of the drilling rig, but much like a Forstner bit fits in the chuck of your drill but is able to drill a 2" wide hole in your cupboard door, it's misleading to look only at what you see on t
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As well as the reactors, they've also got to get the heat-exchangers, turbines and generators down there too
Do they, or could that stuff be on the surface? Pump cold water down, get hot steam back up, run it through a heat exchanger/condenser, cycle it back down again. Or maybe something other than water. You'd lose some heat to the shaft walls, but that could be acceptable.
mind-numbingly boring. (Score:3)
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Indeed. "Exciting" is for products you do not need.
Uranium poisoning in the water (Score:2)
Nice vaporware (Score:2)
But with the usual non-working minds of the nuclear fanbois, this will probably sell.
One reactor for each AI office (Score:3)
Oh boy (Score:2)
Yet another "If only I can get this to work" concept.
Meanwhile, RE is absolutely killing nuclear on cost, availability, timelines, and more.
why does the core have an godzilla button? (Score:2)
why does the core have an godzilla button?
Armageddon! (Score:1)
One can imagine a few scenarios where the core, or a plume of irradiated water, could well canon from the hole like said gas propelled rodent.
Why bother digging? (Score:3)
One thing is definitely for certain... (Score:2)
high-value scam (Score:2)
We see these ideas that are obviously nonsense all the time. This one has been picked apart by multiple people with industry experience already.
What these things are is essentially the venture capital version of the scam mails you get in your mailbox every day. If you make it big enough and insane enough, someone with more money than brains will think he spotted an opportunity that everyone else missed and will invest.
Why is it, you think, that 99% of these things vanish without a trace after an initial sto
Crack in the world (Score:2)
China Syndrome (Score:2)
1.6 km (Score:2)
How many cc's per hectare is that? Sometimes strict adherence to style rules is just stupid.