Pipe dream snake oil or old hat

[bxman]

Never heard of it before

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/zhao1/

https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reacto ... -oklo.html




Like to hear the thoughts of others before forming an opinion

sorry about the ad but it is not to long

[Stinsy]

I remember fast-neutron reactors (FNRs) or breeder reactors being touted as "the next big thing" 30 years ago. It never did happen. The idea simply didn't turn out to be financially viable.

Remember how nuclear power was once touted as being "too cheap to meter"? Modern nuclear (eg HPC) is still astonishingly-expensive per kWh even after many decades. These "breeder" reactors similarly always turned out to be way more expensive in practice than theory.

The one advantage of breeder reactors is that they can use low-quality Uranium, including that refined from spent fuel out of a traditional thermal neutron reactor. However spent fuel represents a tiny (almost insignificant) proportion of the waste from a nuclear power plant and Uranium is plentiful and cheap.

[Oliver90owner]

Likely not a lot different than nuclear sub reactors?

[Moxi]

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[Moxi]

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[bxman]

@Maxi thank you for the information and inspiring me to do some more reading seems like a bit of all three and maybe a bit of reality

the incorporation of heat pipes would be a likely advance in the right direction to my mind

Not sure how long we will have to wait to see if the licence is granted



In the meantime can anyone tell me how the Kilopower converts the power into electricity

What is a sterling converter none on ebay I suppose

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/space ... wer/videos

or KRUSTY

best I have found so far has maybe answered my own question

Like nuclear power plants designed to stay put on Earth, Kilopower is a fission reactor. It converts the heat generated by splitting atoms into electricity, via devices called Stirling engines. (Nuclear power plants, by contrast, generally use this heat to create turbine-turning steam.)12 Aug 2019

Looks like it is several normal sterling engines side by side

So back to the ark then ?

[Moxi]

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[Stinsy]

By far the biggest red flag here is how much effort they put into saying how pretty it is. Nothing at all about cost per kWh or how the site will be cleaned up when the reactor is end of life.

[Moxi]

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