Quote:The significance of these results is hard to overstate, said Gibson. Research on space-ready fission reactors has been mired by high costs and lengthy time frames from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, which resulted in many canceled projects. "This is the first nuclear-powered operation of a new fission reactor concept in the U.S. in 40 years," Gibson said.

Fission reactors have many practical advantages over RTGs. For instance, RTGs generally produce only a few hundred watts, but the reactor is scalable to 10,000 watts. Four units could provide enough power to establish an extraterrestrial outpost, according to a statement NASA released after the event.

(05-03-2018, 05:16 PM)Taem Wrote: It seems everyone is so anti-nuclear energy in America, and not without reason, however I've heard very convincing arguments, on this site here as a matter of fact from members here, that nuclear energy can be a safe alternative.

...And then NASA went and created this: Link

Quote:The significance of these results is hard to overstate, said Gibson. Research on space-ready fission reactors has been mired by high costs and lengthy time frames from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, which resulted in many canceled projects. "This is the first nuclear-powered operation of a new fission reactor concept in the U.S. in 40 years," Gibson said.

Fission reactors have many practical advantages over RTGs. For instance, RTGs generally produce only a few hundred watts, but the reactor is scalable to 10,000 watts. Four units could provide enough power to establish an extraterrestrial outpost, according to a statement NASA released after the event.

I'd love to see these in every home. You go to the store once a decade-to-twenty years+ and purchase an encased Plutonium pill for your generator. It's too bad humanity cannot be trusted with such things... One can still dream.

(05-03-2018, 06:33 PM)kandrathe Wrote: [quote='Taem' pid='215341' dateline='1525367787']
It seems everyone is so anti-nuclear energy in America, and not without reason, however I've heard very convincing arguments, on this site here as a matter of fact from members here, that nuclear energy can be a safe alternative.

...And then NASA went and created this: Link

Quote:The significance of these results is hard to overstate, said Gibson. Research on space-ready fission reactors has been mired by high costs and lengthy time frames from the late 1970s to the early 2000s, which resulted in many canceled projects. "This is the first nuclear-powered operation of a new fission reactor concept in the U.S. in 40 years," Gibson said.

Fission reactors have many practical advantages over RTGs. For instance, RTGs generally produce only a few hundred watts, but the reactor is scalable to 10,000 watts. Four units could provide enough power to establish an extraterrestrial outpost, according to a statement NASA released after the event.

I'd love to see these in every home. You go to the store once a decade-to-twenty years+ and purchase an encased Plutonium pill for your generator. It's too bad humanity cannot be trusted with such things... One can still dream.

Quote:I've been looking at the renewed interest in thorium reactors.

Does not create fissile bomb making materials. Dirty bombs maybe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMSR

(05-03-2018, 11:06 PM)Lissa Wrote: Thorium reactors create fissile material that can be used in bombs. People seem to think that using an LFTR you won't have to deal with neither waste nor fissile material that could be used in bombs, but people that believe this are deluding themselves.

LFTR are breeder reactors, the whole point of a breeder reactor is to make additional fissile material to continue the reaction as you convert fissionable material to fissile material and that you typically make more fissile material than you actually burn. Even still, as you create and burn more fissile material, you also start to get waste fission products that build up. Some of these waste fission products can shutdown the reaction. So periodically, you still have to seperate out the fissile and fissionable material from the waste fission products. While it takes much longer for LFTR, you still have to at some point.

When you do actually seperate the fissile and fissionable material back out, you can then gather material that could be used in weapons. The biggest thing I've heard for why someone wouldn't do that is due to the high amount radiation from the fission products, but the US, GB, France, SU/Russia, and China did exactly this in order to create their arsenals. This is why the various Non-Proliferation Treaties went into effect. Prior to the NPTs, the US use to rerprocess spent fuel and what was known then, but no one is willing to mention because of the NPTs, is that 99.5% of what comes out of a reactor each year is still usable in some way (95% as fuel, around 2% for industry, about 2.5% for medicinal) and only 0.5% of the actual material is waste that has a dangerous period of around 700 years (easily storable). But because of NPTs, we effectively toss 100% of what comes out of a reactor.

I've yet to see a single LFTR proponent be able to truly defend LFTR against standard Fission designs now. LFTR proponents seem to think that while the LFTR designs have been further iterated on to become safer and that standard LWR designs have been stuck in the 60s and 70s designs when in fact they too have been iterated upon (there were designs introduced the 90s that took acts of sabotage to have them meltdown due to the passive safety mechanisms built into the designs).

{Note to FBI: in no way is Bolty responsible for the following }

(05-04-2018, 06:49 PM)kandrathe Wrote:

(05-03-2018, 11:06 PM)Lissa Wrote: Thorium reactors create fissile material that can be used in bombs. People seem to think that using an LFTR you won't have to deal with neither waste nor fissile material that could be used in bombs, but people that believe this are deluding themselves.

LFTR are breeder reactors, the whole point of a breeder reactor is to make additional fissile material to continue the reaction as you convert fissionable material to fissile material and that you typically make more fissile material than you actually burn. Even still, as you create and burn more fissile material, you also start to get waste fission products that build up. Some of these waste fission products can shutdown the reaction. So periodically, you still have to seperate out the fissile and fissionable material from the waste fission products. While it takes much longer for LFTR, you still have to at some point.

When you do actually seperate the fissile and fissionable material back out, you can then gather material that could be used in weapons. The biggest thing I've heard for why someone wouldn't do that is due to the high amount radiation from the fission products, but the US, GB, France, SU/Russia, and China did exactly this in order to create their arsenals. This is why the various Non-Proliferation Treaties went into effect. Prior to the NPTs, the US use to rerprocess spent fuel and what was known then, but no one is willing to mention because of the NPTs, is that 99.5% of what comes out of a reactor each year is still usable in some way (95% as fuel, around 2% for industry, about 2.5% for medicinal) and only 0.5% of the actual material is waste that has a dangerous period of around 700 years (easily storable). But because of NPTs, we effectively toss 100% of what comes out of a reactor.

I've yet to see a single LFTR proponent be able to truly defend LFTR against standard Fission designs now. LFTR proponents seem to think that while the LFTR designs have been further iterated on to become safer and that standard LWR designs have been stuck in the 60s and 70s designs when in fact they too have been iterated upon (there were designs introduced the 90s that took acts of sabotage to have them meltdown due to the passive safety mechanisms built into the designs).

I think the main reason to consider thorium is due to its relative abundance compared to uranium. It is true current fission LWR designs have gone through all the design heavy lifting, and decades of safe operations.

Otherwise, I think we are on the same page...



http://fissilematerials.org/library/sgs09kang.pdf

I believe thorium fuels are more proliferation resistant compared to uranium-based fuels, due to the lack of plutonium production and in the danger of interim radioactive products. Not that a dedicated "state actor", like Iran or North Korea couldn't purify the u-233 to +99% weapons grade with a reprocessing cycle. The fuel is also not suitable for simple "gun" style bomb designs, but more suited to complex implosion designs.

Quote:Upside: If plutonium ever is used as the fissile component of thorium fuel, the plutonium is also thus efficiently consumed. The U-233 produced in thorium process is highly contaminated with U-232. U-232 has a short half-life (68.9 years), and is thusly more dangerous in the short term than U-238 isotopes.

Downside is also an Upside: The decay chain of U-232 in the fuel cell produces very dangerously penetrating gamma rays. Namly, thallium 208, who's decay emits 2.6 MeV gamma rays which are very energetic and highly penetrating. This makes handling "uncooled" fissile U-233 or reprocessed uranium contaminated with U-232 too dangerous. You'd be better off hustling bad actors for enriched uranium or plutonium materials.

Quote:{Note to FBI: in no way is Bolty responsible for the following }

So... suicidal maniac dirty bomb, well, yes maybe. For reference, fuel core is emitting 38 rem (or 380 mSv) /hr at 1 meter.

The rational building of a yielding nuclear bomb, not so much... Literally, any nasty lethal bio-chem in a conventional bomb would be as lethal, harder to detect, and easier to handle with latex gloves and a filter mask. It's in the same line as why Ebola is too lethal to be dangerous. You get it and die before you can spread it. Same here. If you got a pound of hot U-232, you'd be dead before, or soon after you finished making something with it. Exposure to 350 mSv was the criterion for relocating people after the Chernobyl accident, according to the World Nuclear Association.

(06-21-2018, 04:05 AM)LavCat Wrote: Better yet, divert some of the resulting electricity to power a mechanical finger to spin the thing every time it is close to slowing down.

(06-27-2018, 11:24 PM)kandrathe Wrote:

(06-21-2018, 04:05 AM)LavCat Wrote: Better yet, divert some of the resulting electricity to power a mechanical finger to spin the thing every time it is close to slowing down.

I am always skeptical of perpetual energy devices, but realistically in my understanding of quantum reality, it is certainly possible to be converting mass and/or tapping into existing energetic waves. It just has to come from some transformation (conservation of energy).

(06-27-2018, 11:24 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I am always skeptical of perpetual energy devices, but realistically in my understanding of quantum reality, it is certainly possible to be converting mass and/or tapping into existing energetic waves. It just has to come from some transformation (conservation of energy).

(07-03-2018, 05:52 PM)Taem Wrote:

(06-27-2018, 11:24 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I am always skeptical of perpetual energy devices, but realistically in my understanding of quantum reality, it is certainly possible to be converting mass and/or tapping into existing energetic waves. It just has to come from some transformation (conservation of energy).

Here's a fun little thought experiment that just came up for me; the rotations of planets making their infinite turns in space, or of course their circular prograde (or retrograde) rotations around the sun, despite debris in space which should in theory slow down a planets rotation - they do not - seem to prove perpetual motion and hence perpetual energy. How can it be that the orbital moon produces both heat and tidal movement energy on our planet while keeping it's rotation; this alone seems to disprove the law of conservation of energy in regards to perpetual motion. Now before we get into orbital decay, I think it's relevant to point out the obvious, exploiting this "feature" of nature for energy purposes. A large object in space generates its own gravity, this is known, and can elicit it's own satellites which in turn can have their own gravity field (such as our moon) which can have an effect on their host planet. This effect, such as tidal energy, can be harvested freely, hence your supposed impossible perpetual motion device. Now how to replicate that on Earth?

(08-01-2018, 04:37 PM)Taem Wrote: -I wonder why, on a molecular level, the universal gravity equation does not apply.

Quote: Ever wonder why our molecules are more attracted to each other than to Earth's own gravity?

Quote:Is there indeed another force of gravity we're unaware of on the quantum level?

Quote: Why do our bodies stick together at all instead of fall apart at their molecular level and pull downward with the Earth's gravity?

Quote:As I'm sure you all know, a unless molecules are bonded (ex. H2O), then they are not attached, but are merely attracted to one another. Suffice it to say, this internal attraction (gravity) is clearly stronger than Earth's own gravity. I wonder what causes it?

(08-02-2018, 07:22 AM)Ruvanal Wrote: Again electromagnetism. You clearly do not seem to understand that at the current state of the universe, these are two different forces. And as an extra note, scientific testing shows that electromagnetism is 10^36 times stronger than gravity over equal distances.

10^36=1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction