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Comment Meanwhile United States destroying their U-233 (Score 1) 100

I'm seeing criticism of China's choice of salt, and their enrichment of Lithium. This was the same FLiBe salt choice USA used for their MSRE 1965-1969. FLiBe is the salt of choice for Kairos Power, which uses solid pebble fuel, and FLiBe as working fluid. USA did enrich Lithium for MSRE. Kairos Power will enrich lithium for their reactor as well, their Hermes test reactor review process began in 2021, you can monitor their HERMES licensing progress here... https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/n... ...Kairos is already running a non-nuclear reactor with non-enriched Lithium.

Submission + - Three Body Problem fan-edit: Three Body Disembiggened (from 22 hours to 6) (disembiggened.com)

gordm writes: Tencent's production of "Three-Body", their TV show based on Liu Cixin's novel "The Three Body Problem" ran at 22 hours over 30 episodes. Each episode was 45 minutes in length.

Tencent's production adds new characters, and runs 9 hours longer than Three Body Problem's 13 hour audiobook.

Three-Body Disembiggened Fan-Edit shows how Three-Body can be trimmed down to 3 movies of approximately 2 hours each.

Comment Don't read the 4th book, is fan-fiction. (Score 1) 64

Not sure how often it is presented as Quadrilogy rather than a Trilogy, but beware the publisher lists a 4th book as part of the series. It is just fan fiction. I've not heard of anyone who thinks it compares to the actual trilogy. This TV adaptation is of the 1st book, "The Three Body Problem" the 1st book in "Remembrance of Earth's Past". I thought all 3 books in the series were excellent.

Submission + - "Three Body" live adaptation of Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin (youtube.com)

gordm writes: The YouTube playlist offers the first 4 episodes (of a 30 episode series) for free, although the videos include Chinese ads. It has received some decent reviews.

Be sure your YouTube subtitles are turned on.

This was first noted by pfemme2 on Reddit.

I've only watched E01 and noted the most unpleasant reaction I had during my first-read of the book is front-loaded into E01 of the show... that is it is suggested GMO and advanced technologies are a blight upon humanity. I kept reading, and I'm glad I did. But for any viewers put-off by that moment, and not knowing what TBP is about... that moment pays off later.

Submission + - Thoriumdome! Mark Nelson & Dr. Stephen Boyd argue Thorium: Solid or Liquid F (youtube.com)

gordm writes: Mark Nelson squares off against Dr. Stephen Boyd to debate the relative merits of their respective thorium energy solutions.

In the solid-fuel corner, is Mark Nelson. A consultant for Clean Core Thorium Energy, his fuel is being irradiated at INL, and looks to start fuelling commercial heavy water reactors (such as Canada's CANDU) by 2025.

In the liquid-fuel corner, Dr. Stephen Boyd argues his Th-MSR can produce more than just clean electricity. And that, in fact, electricity is an extremely low-profit market with which to fund a fleet of reactors.

Comment Re: Nuclear Waste - It's all about perspective. (Score 2) 273

âoeWe could always just launch the stuff into spaceâ

https://youtu.be/Us2Z-WC9rao

â¦absolutely fantastic video deep-dive on why not.

Recycling it into new fuel is very doable. Only 5% of âoenuclear wasteâ energy potential has been tapped.

Use it all up, becomes 500 year problem of Fission Products, rather than mostly Plutonium+ unused uranium.

Submission + - COP27 Nuclear Debate (youtube.com)

gordm writes: At COP27, Tobias HoÌlle (activist with Fridays for Future) debated Mark Nelson (of Radiant Energy) as to whether nuclear power can help us tackle climate change.

Tobias and Mark disagree on nuclear lifecycle emissions. It appeared neither was allowed to share citations with the audience, but here as likely sources based upon the emission numbers givenâ¦

Nuclear high-carbon numbers from https://wiseinternational.org/...â>WISE International.

Nuclear low-carbon numbers from https://unece.org/sed/document...â>United Nations European Economic Commission.

Submission + - INL now testing ANEEL thorium fuel (deep-link to ANEEL announcement moment) (youtube.com)

gordm writes: Mark Nelson announced at Thorium Energy Alliance Conference #11 that a Thorium-based fuel was being being loaded "today" (2022-10-13) into a test reactor at Idaho National Labs.

ANEEL ("Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life") is a combination of Thorium and HALEU, intended for heavy-water reactors such as CANDU, which have a lower power density than conventional Pressurized Water Reactors.

This lower power density makes the Thorium more likely to turn into Uranium-233 (fissile fuel) than turn into Uranium-234 (non-fissile junk).

Mark Nelson says that ANEEL fuel would allow a CANDU to operate in USA. No CANDU has (yet?) been constructed in USA, because they would not be licensed to operate being fuelled by natural uranium as they are in Canada.

Submission + - SpaceX Brightness Mitigation Strategies for Starlink (and others) (starlink.com)

gordm writes: SpaceX documents their past and future strategies for mitigating impact on Earth-based astronomy.
  • space-stable dielectric Bragg reflector film that reduces satellite visibility by an order of magnitude to be offered at cost to other constellation operators
  • low reflectivity black paint, which is five times less reflective than the current darkest available space-stable paint
  • second generation Starlink will point solar arrays away from sun when crossing the terminator, sacrificing 25% power

The PDF is an excellent explainer of the challenge for a layman (like me), and includes a tally of difficulties still facing Starlink in respecting Earth-based astronomy.

Comment "earthquake-safety upgrades" ? No. (Score 1, Informative) 135

A spokesperson for the governor clarified that Newsom still wants to see the facility shut down long term. "It's been six years since PG&E agreed to close the plant near San Luis Obispo, rather than invest in expensive environmental and earthquake-safety upgrades."

...folks the ENVIRONMENTAL "upgrades" is a thing. It is a nonsense thing... Diablo outputs warm water into the infinite-heat-sink which is The Pacific Ocean. There's no actual impact since that started in 1995... that tiny amount of warm water is now normality as far as marine life is concerned.

But the spokesperson saying there's EARTHQUAKE-SAFETY UPGRADES required?

No. That's NOT a thing. No regulatory body, not the NRC not the Feds not California gov, no one has ever specified any earthquake safety upgrade is required.

I was at a hearing about the warm-water nonsense and every anti-nuke that came to speak talked about earthquakes. No one actually spoke about warm water. Warm water is why PG&E was forced to plan to close Diablo. Not earthquake safety.

But possibly 100 anti-nukes taking to the podium to each repeat "The Big One" over and over has confused the issue in Newsom or Newsom's staff mind.

Comment Re:Why is Musk even mentioned? (Score 1) 135

Because he saw the original 79 Scientists+CEOs open letter asking Newsom keep Diablo open...

https://mobile.twitter.com/sla... ...by way of Slashdot feed, and responded "Agreed" and I'm personally hoping he'll chime in on Diablo again, to clarify his agreement. I think his (more vocal) support of Diablo would help improve the chanced Diablo stays open.

Submission + - Gavin Newsom considers delaying closure of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant (latimes.com)

Submission + - Canada excludes Nuclear from Canadian Green Bond Framework (nationalpost.com)

gordm writes: Quebec MP Steven Guilbeault was appointed Canada's Minister of the Environment & Climate Change on 2021-10-26, one month after PM Justin Trudeau was re-elected, and replacing the pro-nuclear Saemus O'Regan who championed Canada's SMR Roadmap (Small Modular Reactor Roadmap). https://smrroadmap.ca/

Despite Canadian Liberals having introduced SMR Roadmap as a means of addressing climate change, their new Minister of the Environment has excluded it from Green Bond funding opportunities. This is after (at COP26) Steven Guilbeault downplayed his past anti-nuclear Greenpeace campaigning, saying that "it wouldn't be up to government to decide" Canada's clean-energy future. https://twitter.com/Dr_Keefer/...

Canada's Green Bond Framework EXCLUDES the following: fossil fuels, nuclear energy, arms manufacturing, gambling, tobacco, alcohol. (Pornography is not excluded.) https://www.canada.ca/en/depar...

7,000 Canadians have signed a petition demanding nuclear power be included in the Green Bond Framework. https://petitions.ourcommons.c...

This would be similar to EU's inclusion in their own Green Taxonomy. After a scientific review. https://publications.jrc.ec.eu...

Steven Guilbeault's exclusion of nuclear was not accompanied by a scientific review.

Canadian nuclear is 3.2g CO2eq /kWh. https://www.researchgate.net/f... ...that is because the current fleet runs on domestic mining of Canadian uranium, and because the CANDU fleet runs on un-enriched (natural) uranium. The first Canadian SMR is expected to start operating in 2026, and is projected to have a lifecycle carbon footprint on-par with the CANDU fleet.

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