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From: Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 02:20:40 +1000
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On 11/06/2025 11:21 pm, David Brown wrote:
> 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>.

Nuclear reactors do produce them, but not by nuclear fission as I 
explained in the section below, which you clearly hadn't read when you 
produced your response.

>> 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.

What makes you think that transuranic radioactive isotopes are 
particularly long-lived? Heavier nuclei do tend to be less stable - 
technicium is the lightest element that doesn't have a stable isotope.

>>>  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 purified residue back into the reactor
> 
> If only there were a way to do that...

There is. It involves doing chemistry on very nasty radioactive spent 
fuel rods so it's difficult and expensive, but perfectly practicable, if 
mostly economicaly impractical

>>> 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.

It was never any kind of secret, but nobody liked talking about it.

>>>  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.

But you don't seem to bother. I got taught most of this stuff long 
before Google got going, but getting at the contents of the Melbourne 
University libraries isn't all that easy from Sydney and finding the 
information with google is pretty straightforward.
> To the bomb makers, there is no such thing as a "satisfactory" bomb - 
> they always want bigger.

Not always. You can fit small atomic bombs into big artillery shells, 
and fire them far enough away to survive the blast.

>>> 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.

https://hb11.energy/

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

HB11 hopes that they can get their scheme working rather earlier than 
that. I heard about it at tolerably sober Royal Society of NSW 
presentation. Nobody is promising that it is going to work, but the 
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