@Sir_Osis_of_Liver
@kbin.socialPositive feedback loops, how do they work?
We've known about this for decades. An example: heating causes permafrost to melt releasing CO2 and methane, which cause more heat to be trapped, which melts more permafrost, which releases more green house gasses, etc.
Positive feedback loops tend to be very unstable, and can lead to runaway situations.
It makes it sound like these attacks are out of the blue with no justification. The Israelis have been bulldozing civilian homes and stealing their land without repercussion since 1967, not to mention a long history of summary executions and random shootings. This is the type of asymmetrical warfare that should have been predicted.
The IDF response has been targeting civilians in far higher numbers with completely indiscriminate retaliatory rocket, artillery and airstrikes. The blockade of all humanitarian aid to the West Bank and Gaza, including food, fuel and medical aid will result in widespread civilian deaths. It's the same tactics used in the Holomodor and in the Warsaw Ghettos, and most definitely war crimes.
There are no white hats here.
That's just not true. The Westinghouse AP1000 was given type approval in 2011. It's what is referred to as a GEN3+ reactor. A lot of R&D was put into simplifying the design, reducing the number of pipe runs, valves, pumps etc compared to GEN2 reactors. It also used large sub assemblies that were factory built off-site then moved for final assembly.
In theory they should have been cheaper to build, but they weren't. Large assemblies that don't fit together properly need a lot of very expensive site time for rework. There were other issues on top of that, which just compounded the assembly problems. It's how Vogtle ended up going from $12B to $30B+, and V.C Summer went from $9B to an estimated $23B when the project was cancelled while under construction.
The EPR units from Areva were similar GEN3+and received type approval in the early 2000s. They had similar cost overruns, for similar reasons.
I have strong reservations about SMRs. So far the cost/MW is about on par with traditional reactors while the amount of waste increases by 2 to 30x traditional reactors depending on technology used.
There are reasons why reactors moved from 300-600MW units to 1000MW+ in the first place. The increased output would cover what was thought to be marginal increase in costs. That turned out to be at least somewhat true.
Just like assuming a perfectly spherical cow, or a frictionless surface, you can completely ignore the economics, the massive cost and schedule overages to make nuclear work.
Flamanville-3 in France started construction in 2007, was supposed to be operational in 2012 with a project budget of €3.3B. Construction is still ongoing, the in-service date is now sometime in 2024, and the budget has ballooned to €20B.
Olkiluoto-3 is a similar EPR. Construction started in 2005, was supposed to be in-service in 2010, but finally came online late last year. Costs bloated from €3 to €11B.
Hinkley Point C project is two EPRs. Construction started in 2017, it's already running behind schedule, and the project costs have increased from £16B to somewhere approaching £30B. Start up has been pushed back to 2028 the last I've heard.
It's no different in the US, where the V.C. Summer (2 x AP1000) reactor project was cancelled while under construction after projections put the completed project at somewhere around $23B, up from an estimate of $9B.
A similar set of AP1000s was built at Vogtle in Georgia. Unit 3 only recently came online, with unit 4 expected at the end of the year. Costs went from an initial estimate of $12B to somewhere over $30B.
Note that design, site selection, regulatory approvals, and tendering aren't included in the above. Those add between 5-10 years to the above schedules.
Oh, I remember that ad campaign really well. Dad was a fan and used: "Where's the beef?" early and often.
Moon regolith is pretty nasty stuff. It's chemically reduced due to the lack of O2 to react with, and becomes corrosive when exposed to moisture. The absence of atmosphere, means that sharp edges of the dust particles aren't rounded off by erosion, making the dust/soil particularly abrasive. It's also positively charged, so sticks to everything.
None of that is insurmountable, but it does stack up mitigation costs.
For years I had a GE cut sheet for a turboencabulator from 1962 pinned to the wall in my office. It was pretty funny seeing people, some of them senior engineers, try to figure it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo\_encabulator#/media/File:GE\_Turboencabulator\_pg\_1.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo\_encabulator#/media/File:GE\_Turboencabulator\_pg\_2.jpg
I did work at Big Bend generating station in Apollo Beach across the bay from Tampa about 15 years ago. Anyone living in Apollo Beach would call bullshit on that.
The beach used to have a thick black line at the high tide level where coal dust blown from the coal piles would settle, and if the FGD system was down, acidic fly-ash would settle on cars and burn through the paint. And that's before even discussing the 12MT/yr CO2 emissions at its peak.