Mostly sitting around full of transuranic elements with half-lives in the tens of thousands of years in facilities that were meant to be quite temporary, without much in the way of functional or economically competitive breeder reactors even where they have been tried. They will eventually incur one of three costs: reprocessing, geological storage, or release.
what about Thorium power?
Near as I can tell it’s a way to boost the amount of fertile fuel for breeder reactors by about a factor of five. The technology is similar, with advantages and disadvantages. No matter what you have to run refined material through very complicated and capital-intensive and energy-intensive things, keep things contained, and dispose of waste.
These fuel cycles do work and they do produce energy, and if done right some technologies of the suite promoted for the purpose might reduce the waste quite a bit. My gripe is the fact that they work well (not to mention safely) in stable civilizations with lots of capital and concentrated wealth to put towards it that isn’t being applied to more basic infrastructure. Given the vagaries of history moving wealth and power around and the massive cheap energy and wealth subsidy that comes from fossil fuels that will go away, I’m not convinced that they can be run for long periods of time at a level that can compensate for the torrents of cheap wealth you get from burning the black rocks. I wouldn’t be terrilbly surprised at some nuclear power plants being around in a few thousand years, but I would be surprised at them providing anything like as much per capita as fossil fuels do now due to the complexity and wealth concentration issues.
sufficient automation… energy (and most other things) will cost much less than today, with fossil fuels or without them.
I don’t understand how automation changes the energy, material, or complexity costs (think supply chains or fuel flows) associated with a technology.
We have ITER.
Yes, and fusion research is fascinating. But the fact that while understanding of nuclear physics has been pretty well constant for decades more and more money goes into more and more expensive facilities, when looking back at the history of fission power (which does work, I’m not disputing that, just the cornucopian claims about it) pretty much as soon as it was understood it was taken advantage of, suggests to me that the sheer difficulty of it is such that the sort of technology that makes it possible is likely to be completely uneconomic. Technology is not an all-powerful force, it just is an accumulation of knowledge about how to make things that are possible happen. Some things will turn out to not be possible, or require too much effort to be worthwhile.
Imagine the energy per capita available to a civilization that builds Dyson spheres.
Except that when we look out into the universe we don’t see Dyson spheres, or evidence of replicators from elsewhere having passed our way, and we would be able to see Dyson spheres from quite a distance. It doesn’t happen. I’ve never understood why so few people look at the Fermi paradox and consider the possibility that it doesn’t mean we are a special snowflake or that we are doomed, but instead that intelligent life just doesn’t have a grand destiny among the stars and never has.
...They will eventually incur one of three costs: reprocessing, geological storage, or release.
How much does it cost to maintain the current facilities? By what factor does it make nuclear energy more expensive?
I don’t understand how automation changes the energy, material, or complexity costs (think supply chains or fuel flows) associated with a technology.
The most important component of economic cost is human labor. We have plenty of energy and materials in the universe left. “complexity” is not a limited resource so I don’t understand what “complexity cost” is.
Some things will turn out to not be possible...
Yes, but I think that current technology is very far from the limits of the possible.
Except that when we look out into the universe we don’t see Dyson spheres, or evidence of replicators from elsewhere having passed our way, and we would be able to see Dyson spheres from quite a distance.
Sure, because we are the only intelligent life the universe. What’s so surprising about that?
Mostly sitting around full of transuranic elements with half-lives in the tens of thousands of years in facilities that were meant to be quite temporary, without much in the way of functional or economically competitive breeder reactors even where they have been tried. They will eventually incur one of three costs: reprocessing, geological storage, or release.
Near as I can tell it’s a way to boost the amount of fertile fuel for breeder reactors by about a factor of five. The technology is similar, with advantages and disadvantages. No matter what you have to run refined material through very complicated and capital-intensive and energy-intensive things, keep things contained, and dispose of waste.
These fuel cycles do work and they do produce energy, and if done right some technologies of the suite promoted for the purpose might reduce the waste quite a bit. My gripe is the fact that they work well (not to mention safely) in stable civilizations with lots of capital and concentrated wealth to put towards it that isn’t being applied to more basic infrastructure. Given the vagaries of history moving wealth and power around and the massive cheap energy and wealth subsidy that comes from fossil fuels that will go away, I’m not convinced that they can be run for long periods of time at a level that can compensate for the torrents of cheap wealth you get from burning the black rocks. I wouldn’t be terrilbly surprised at some nuclear power plants being around in a few thousand years, but I would be surprised at them providing anything like as much per capita as fossil fuels do now due to the complexity and wealth concentration issues.
I don’t understand how automation changes the energy, material, or complexity costs (think supply chains or fuel flows) associated with a technology.
Yes, and fusion research is fascinating. But the fact that while understanding of nuclear physics has been pretty well constant for decades more and more money goes into more and more expensive facilities, when looking back at the history of fission power (which does work, I’m not disputing that, just the cornucopian claims about it) pretty much as soon as it was understood it was taken advantage of, suggests to me that the sheer difficulty of it is such that the sort of technology that makes it possible is likely to be completely uneconomic. Technology is not an all-powerful force, it just is an accumulation of knowledge about how to make things that are possible happen. Some things will turn out to not be possible, or require too much effort to be worthwhile.
Except that when we look out into the universe we don’t see Dyson spheres, or evidence of replicators from elsewhere having passed our way, and we would be able to see Dyson spheres from quite a distance. It doesn’t happen. I’ve never understood why so few people look at the Fermi paradox and consider the possibility that it doesn’t mean we are a special snowflake or that we are doomed, but instead that intelligent life just doesn’t have a grand destiny among the stars and never has.
How much does it cost to maintain the current facilities? By what factor does it make nuclear energy more expensive?
The most important component of economic cost is human labor. We have plenty of energy and materials in the universe left. “complexity” is not a limited resource so I don’t understand what “complexity cost” is.
Yes, but I think that current technology is very far from the limits of the possible.
Sure, because we are the only intelligent life the universe. What’s so surprising about that?