Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:21:27 +0200
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On 11/06/2025 13:41, Bill Sloman wrote:
> On 11/06/2025 5:38 pm, David Brown wrote:
>> On 10/06/2025 19:23, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>> On 11/06/2025 2:32 am, David Brown wrote:
>>>> On 10/06/2025 16:16, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>> On 10/06/2025 5:21 pm, David Brown wrote:
>>>>>> On 10/06/2025 07:01, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>>>> On 10/06/2025 6:44 am, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>>>>>>> Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On 2025-06-09 21:54, Don Y wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> OTOH, we're sticking with other technologies (fossil fuels -- 
>>>>>>>>>> coal -- and
>>>>>>>>>> nukes) despite obvious and yet to be solved problems INHERENT 
>>>>>>>>>> in their
>>>>>>>>>> technology.  Adding "inertia" synthetically to a network is a 
>>>>>>>>>> considerably
>>>>>>>>>> more realistic goal than sorting out how to deal with nuclear 
>>>>>>>>>> waste or
>>>>>>>>>> the consequences of burning carbon.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Technically and economically, dealing with nuclear waste is many 
>>>>>> orders of magnitude easier than dealing with the consequences of 
>>>>>> burning carbon.
>>>>>
>>>>> Nuclear fission waste is mixture of isotopes. Some of them are very 
>>>>> radioactive and decay fast, and keeping them safe until they've 
>>>>> mostly decayed is technically demanding. The less radioactive 
>>>>> isotopes are easier to handle, but some of them stay dangerously 
>>>>> radioactive for upwards of 100,000 years, and keeping them safely 
>>>>> isolated for that length of time is an as yet unsolved problem
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> We all know that, I believe.  There are two ways to handle the waste 
>>>> - bury it deep enough, or use reprocessing/recycling to reduce the 
>>>> worst of the waste.  (Of course a better idea is to use more 
>>>> advanced nuclear reactors that produce more electricity for less 
>>>> waste.)
>>>
>>> There aren't any. If you fission U-233 (which is what thorium 
>>> reactors do) you get slightly different proportions of exactly the 
>>> same isotopes as you get from U-235 which pose essentially the same 
>>> problems.
>>
>> Estimates by proponents of molten salt thorium reactors are between a 
>> hundredth and a thousandth of the levels of the more problematic waste 
>> materials for the same generated electricity.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission_product

Oh, thanks for that!  I'd never heard of Wikipedia before.  I have also 
heard rumours that there is a newfangled way to search for information - 
"goggle", or something like that.  Perhaps you could explain that to us too?

> 
>>   No doubt they are overly optimistic, but they are still massively 
>> more efficient.
> 
> The claim appears to be total nonsense.
> 

Ah, well, if you say so it must be true.  You can no doubt refer to some 
comic book as a reference.

>> For the  long-lived transuranic radioactive isotopes,
> 
> Nuclear fission doesn't produce any long-lived transuranic radioactive 
> isotopes. 

Try reading the Wikipedia article you linked - perhaps also the page 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-lived_fission_product>.

> The neutron flux in a nuclear reactor can be captured and 
> promote some of the uranium and plutonium around into even heavier 
> isotopes, but it is very minor component in nuclear waste.
> 
>> the thorium cycle in a  molten salt reactor gives about 5% of the 
>> quantities you get from standard light-water uranium reactors, and the 
>> waste is in a form that is easier to separate and recycle.
> 
> Since the transuranic radioactive isotopes are a very minor problem 
> anyway, who cares?
> 

It is the long-lived ones that are the problem.  Short-lived isotopes 
are only an issue if you let them escape before they have decayed.

>>  Conventional uranium reactors use less than 1% of the uranium for 
>> useful energy production - the rest is wasted.  With molten salt 
>> thorium reactors, close to 100% of the thorium is used.
> 
> Eventually. You have to take the spent fuel out of the reactor, take out 
> the fission product and the U-233 that has been generated by neutron 
> capture, and put the purigied residue back into the reactor
> 

If only there were a way to do that...

>> Even with uranium fuel rather than thorium, breeder reactors and 
>> higher temperature molten salt reactors can greatly reduce the worst 
>> parts of the waste while generating power.
> 
> Twaddle.
> 
>>> You don't get any Pu-239 from neutron capture in U-238, but that's a 
>>> feature rather than a bug.
>>
>> The problem with the nuclear industry is that it was viewed as a bug, 
>> not a feature.
> 
> Nobody liked admitting that U-235/U238 nuclear reactor were plutonium 
> breeders, and that processing spent fuel involved recovering the Pu-239 
> that had been bred, but there's no way they can avoid breeding plutonium
> 

If it was a secret, it was a badly kept secret.

>>  That is why thorium reactors where pretty much abandoned in the race 
>> to build bigger bombs. 
> 
> U-233 makes perfectly satisfactory bombs. Bigger bombs were actually 
> hydrogen bombs, and the even bigger bombs that followed them used an 
> outer layer of U-238 to capture lots of the neutron produced by hydrogen 
> fusion, turning it into Pu-239 which fissioned immediately.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon

I know the basics of nuclear weapons, and I know how to read Wikipedia.

To the bomb makers, there is no such thing as a "satisfactory" bomb - 
they always want bigger.

> 
>> Priorities have changed since then, and lots of countries are working 
>> on thorium and molten salt breeder reactors.
>>
>>> Nuclear fusion is more promising and hydrogen-boron fusion doesn't 
>>> produce any neutrons at all - or wouldn't if anybody could get it to 
>>> work.
> 

Don't believe the hype.  Wait another 50 years until it is working.

> 
>> Nuclear fusion has /always/ been promising.  I am sure it will be 
>> achieved eventually, but if we wait for it to be a commercially 
>> realistic source of a substantial proportion of the world's energy 
>> production, we will already have lost the ice on Antarctica, flooding 
>> the homes of about a quarter of the world's population, and raised the 
>> temperature of the homes of another quarter to uninhabitable levels.
> 
> The guys at HB11 would beg to differ.

Of course they would.  After all, they are financed by venture 
capitalists - begging is the name of the game.  They will keep releasing 
news about things /almost/ working in order to keep the cash flowing in. 
  /Eventually/ they might get it working - or someone else will - but it 
will be decades longer than any media release suggests.  The same goes 
for the dozen other private fusion research companies around the world.

> They are currently financed by 
> venture capitalist - which implies a 5% chance that their approach can 
> be made to work, though I suspect that the odds are rather worse because 
> the pay-off would be remarkably generous. You snipped the link without 
> marking the snip.

I snipped the link because I don't post links to random sites.

> 
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