> Your response makes sense *unless* the company is able to deliver their solution
> at a price that significantly undercuts previous technologies.

As I noted in my initial post, wrong. Even if they significantly undercut previous technologies, they will still be out of the money. A 20-year PPA for PV with 4-hour firming is 4 cents right now, today, and falling. They are predicting best-case 8.4 cents in some future date. So even if they hit their numbers, no one is going to buy this for power.

And that price prediction is based on numbers that make no sense at all. For instance, they are using a $850 million CAPEX on the plant, yet Darlington just spent that much *just to develop the plot of land* for their new SMR build. And that land was *already set aside* in the 1980s for a new plant.

There is no rule of physics that says their numbers are completely pants, but I'll bet anyone here they are.

> The main reason it never was used is that this technique can be used to create nuclear bombs.

Fascinating seeing you say that after complaining...

> You are the fanatic who is not aware of technological realities

The reason we don't use reprocessing is that it is fantastically expensive. That is the only reason.

Here's a report from Los Alamos on the topic:

https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/doe/lanl/lib-www/la-pubs/00315989.pdf

If you care to turn to page 19, you will see that the effective cost of power from reprocessed fuel breaks even with fresh uranium ore when the ore costs about $100 to $200 per pound. At the time they were writing the report, it was around 40 to 60, so it was not economically viable. However, in the 1960s the assumption was that there would be 1000 reactors in service by the early 1980s. The amount of ore and the speed of reprocessing, combined with the expected demand, suggested prices well over $200 were likely, so moving to a closed fuel cycle was required.

However, the crash of the nuclear market just prior to TMI, followed by lowered power demands, led to a total of about 200 reactors. At the same time, large new amounts of ore were developed, especially in Australia, and cheaper LEU enrichment systems were introduced. As a result, the cost of uranium dropped, instead of rising, and the entire purpose of the closed fuel cycle evaporated.

For comparison, the current price of yellowcake is around $65. Inflation adjusting that to FY79 gives $14, about 1/4 to 1/5 the spot price in 1979. So it is dramatically cheaper to simply buy new fuel than to try to extract it from waste, on the order of 10 times.

Now I know you'll object that this is not what Carter said. And that is true. But it is also true that he was being widely and continually advised that moving to a closed cycle make absolutely no sense for the reasons above. That is why the many other countries that developed such processes, like France (breeders) and Japan (PUREX) had all given up on it by the 1990s as well. In the 30 years since, the numbers have not changed. China's build-out has been matched by a similar number of older reactors going offline, ore prices remain fairly steady, and capacity factor of existing reactors improved to further erode the value of fuel.

To put this in perspective, Canada's CANDU fleet has excellent neutron economy and that allows it to run on a variety of fuels, including those with thorium and reprocessed uranium. We also have the capacity, notably pre-built in Port Hope, to run practically any fuel cycle we wish. We have done this in a real production setting (as opposed to experimental runs) precisely zero times, because it still makes absolutely no economic sense.

> Everything about nuclear energy is expensive

Precisely.

> This is the first time that an actual solution to disposing of nuclear waste, has been achieved

Reprocessing and fast breeders have been around as long as light water reactors. The reason we don't use them is that they are fantastically expensive.

There is n reason to believe this cycle will be as cheap as the company claims, so it is highly unlikely this will change anything.

> The cost may be high, but the importance is also high

We have been talking about this problem for almost a century and done nothing about it, so I don't think anyone agrees that the importance is high.

> So in the cost/benefit equation, it still makes sense

Perhaps to people who think "the importance is also high", but they appear to have little sway.

Moltex has been pitching this concept for some time now. They moved from the UK to NB because the province was trying to figure out what to do with their CANDU replacement and put up some money for alternatives willing to move to the province. Moltex, and two others, obliged.

Moltex claims that a WATSS + SSR reactor can produce electricity for about 14.5 cents/Wh. That is twice the current going rate, let alone the rate from the paid-off CANDU6. However, they also claim that by burning the waste from other plants that the cost would come down into the 8.5 range, which is competitive with CANDU's like Pickering.

However, all of this depends on the capital cost of the WATSS being around 850 million. There is absolutely no way that will happen. Everything takes place in hot cells, the plant structure itself has to be safed, the resulting fuel has to be moved to the SSR for round-trip processing, and you HAVE to include general cost overruns one has to bake into any nuclear plant, let alone first-of-type.

20 years ago everyone was pitching their energy ideas by claiming the result would be cheaper than coal, but these days most things are cheaper than coal so when you see someone making that claim you know they're full of BS. So when I see Moltex claiming "cheaper than PUREX" I don't see "economically viable" I read it as "less unviable" and that's not inspiring. It's simply not a useful comparison in an era where 20-year PPA's on solar are 2 cents and 4 cents with 4-hour firming.

One can twist the claims a little to be more about the timelines of the waste than the electricity cost itself, but no matter the protestations one reads around these parts of the 'net, people don't *really* care about waste. It's been sitting around in casks and pools for decades and no one's doing anything, and no one's really asking them to. So while we might all think this is a great idea, finding the money for it, and the political capital, seems like the difficult part. Ultimately the pitch comes down to that, we burn your waste, and I'm not convinced this is a big enough issue for the ratepayers of NB to consider doubling the cost of their wholesale power.

> that could have been deadly if they hit a cargo ship

An empty aluminum sphere? Terminal velocity is probably on the order of 30 to 35 mph.

It would probably not hurt you very much, and do nothing whatsoever to a ship.

AI centers demand two things, power and water.

And so while they're going to use gas to power this site, and god knows about the water, the Grande Baleine dam in Quebec is just sitting there with... power and water.

Seems like a no-brainer to me. It's also closer to the US and Canadian population mass, so lower latencies. Running some fibre down the existing corridor does not seem like a possible impediment either.

> which go into production only six years after ground breaking

Sure, in China. I guarantee if you try it anywhere else it will not take 6 years.

Want evidence? Barakah. Took 6 in Korea. Took 12 in UAE.

A counterexample perhaps? Qinshan. Took 8 years to make a CANDU6 in Canada, where they are built. Took 6 years in China.

Simply put, these things take longer to build in countries that don't have a supply chain, and China is no more immune to that effect than anyone else.

> "We expect the power generation portion of the system to be available as early as 2027
> with the nuclear module being available to customers about 2030 based on regulatory
> approval." From the report:

I have a million I'll bet they won't. No seriously, anyone want the other side?

> and use it as engine for space ships

It's a crap space engine, the energy density is way too low.

Fission is perfectly good in space. What, you worry about the radiation?!

> Yes they do. The high temperature superconducting magnets that commonwealth fusion systems have solve the problem.

They do not. The magnets themselves are subject to neutron dislocations as well, and REBCO is worse than simpler magnets in that regard. CFS claims it's not that bad, but that's the mantra of fusion since the 1950s.

It also doesn't solve the *actual* problem that turning off the reactor to get at the deeper bits requires weeks of warming up and cooling down, which means there is no way the thing can possibly be economic. You can't make your interest payments if you're not generating power.

> However, it'll immediately start making the second one ecenomical, because it'll start producing the tritium that they previously had to buy

I'm not clear why you believe tritium is the economic problem. It is not.

> Also, pointing to things like ITER to say that cost-effective fusion is impossible is like pointing to the ISS and saying SpaceX is impossible.

The cost of a fission plant outside the nuclear island - that is all the things like steam generators, turbines, cooling loops, etc. - is about 60% of the total cost. Assuming MIT's ridiculously low estimates of reactor cost, $6.50/We, that makes just those portions of the system about $4/W. A fusion plant is basically identical to a fission one outside the island, you're basically replacing the one heat-generating box with another.

PV systems in the US currently cost about $1/W. With storage, that goes to about $2/W. Feel free to explain how fusion will compete with dispatchable power from PV when the system already costs twice as much as a PV system **before you have even built the fusion bit.**

Before you come up with the first thing ChatGPT tells you, I've worked in the supply-side for a decade, and have been writing about fusion for several decades. I can happily back up all of these numbers with many, *man* references if you don't take my word for it. So please take at least 10 seconds to come up with something cogent that you think addresses these very real facts.

> All these commenters who think they're so smart coming out with the same "Fusion power
> is 20 years away and always will be, har har har!"-quip who don't know a damned thing
> about the field and its progression is so tiring

Well I'm a physicist who has been writing about fusion since my 3rd year E&M thesis in the 1980s, and I say fusion power is 20 years away (at least).

But by all means, explain what makes you an expert on the topic and how I "don't know a damned thing" in comparison.

> I think JET is the only reactor that was ever built so far with the goal of being energy positive

Nope, JET, TFTR and JT-60 were all designed to hit breakeven, and such claims are widely found in 1980s documents. JT-60s original name was "breakeven test reactor". T-15 was also, although finding claims of that is not so easy.

> when we ran out of new magnet technology to squeeze everything in tighter

No, it's when we learned that the performance was nowhere near what we expected and we had no clear way to improve it other than a massive scale-up like ITER.

CFS makes the system physically smaller, but has no real effect on the original physics problems that were found in the 1990s.

Does no one read history any more?

Industrial heat costs pennies per kWh of electric equivalent. There is absolutely no way nuclear can compete for process heat. None. Zero.

Nuclear can *barely* compete on the electricity front as it is, and that's *dramatically* more profitable than process heat.

That's why there is a single example of utility-scale nuclear heat in all of history and that was purely a "first!" on the part of the then-soviets.

Stop reading the nuk-boi propaganda. There is precisely zero market for this.

The Antares design is around 100 kWe, with claims to 1 MW. There are already thousands of 3 to 4 MW emergency portable generators in shipping-container sized trailers around the US today, using Diesel. The idea of hauling some future portable nuclear reactor Ito a disaster zone instead of existing Diesel ones solves what problem, exactly?

Oh I'm sure you'll parrot some more propaganda from the pitchmen about fuel supply and logistics and so forth, but again, there is precisely zero actual market for this. The military... *maybe*, but I'm skeptical of that as well.

> was obviously as hell two birds flying low over the ground

There are numerous birds in the new release as well. This is why the pro-UFO people are dismissing it as much as anyone else.

> I don't have a conspiracy theory to explain it

Oh don't worry, they've got you covered on that part!