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From: David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: The Physics Behind the Spanish Blackout
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2025 13:51:25 +0200
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On 11/06/2025 18:20, Bill Sloman wrote:
> 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.
> 

Nuclear fission produces long-lived transuranic radioactive isotopes.

It is quite obvious that when a big nucleus breaks into pieces, the 
pieces will be smaller than the original nucleus - the fission of a 
uranium nucleus does not create a transuranic isotope directly.  But 
sometimes one of these little pieces flies off and sticks to another big 
nucleus, and that can then give you an even bigger nucleus.  Those big 
nuclei are sometimes long-lived transuranic radioactive isotopes.  They 
come about as a result of the nuclear fission in the nuclear reactor.

Do you /really/ think the technical distinction you are making is 
remotely relevant to anything?

>>> 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.
> 

Here's an idea for you - instead of guessing randomly, try looking it 
up.  Such information is easily available.  Yes, many very heavy 
isotopes are unstable and short-lived.  Others are long-lived.

>>>>  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
> 

It is entirely possible, and entirely practical - that is how molten 
salt reactors work.  Of course they don't get everything out, they don't 
recycle everything, and there are technical and economic limitations. 
But the fundamentals were figured out in the 1960's, and recent 
developments have improved on that.

>>
>> Fusion energy has been 50 years in the future for the last 80 years.  
>> I have not seen anything to suggest that has changed much - and I make 
>> a point of keeping up with scientific and technical news.
> 
> But you haven't heard of hydrogen-boron fusion? 

Yes, I have heard about it.  The idea is nice, but the temperature 
needed to make it work is an order of magnitude higher than for D-T 
fusion, and no one can make that temperature stably or reliably.  It is, 
I think, something that might come in the future - /after/ commercial 
D-T fusion.  Perhaps there will be breakthroughs in containment that 
will make these high temperatures practical, in which case the H-B 
fusion's advantages would come into play.  So I think it is good that 
research is being done in the field, but I am not holding my breath 
waiting for it to appear.

> And you haven't noticed 
> that the current generation of hydrogen fusion machines have got pretty 
> close to the Lawson criterion 

And on what basis do you claim to know what I have or have not noticed? 
Or are you really so naïve as to think momentarily generating more 
energy than you lose means that practical commercial fusion reactors are 
just round the corner?

> (and I did work with John D. Lawson's 
> youngest son, who wasn't remotely in  the same league).
> 

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