Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2024-08-14/Special report

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I just watched the Atomic Bamboozle DVD which I checked out from my local public library. A key takeaway from that: the first (experimental) nuclear power plants were small-sized. The problem with those was that it was hard to get them to work economically. That's why the industry went big with reactors, they're more economically efficient at producing power. Too bad large language models are only good at plagiarism and suck at math. We need AI to help us solve the puzzle of how to milk all the radioactivity out of nuclear fission waste until there's not much left, or solve the puzzle of how to make nuclear fusion work at anything resembling small scale. – wbm1058 (talk) 18:09, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Wbm1058: Thanks for the link to Atomic Bamboozle. There's a further link to the Trailer of the film on Youtube which gives a good idea of what the film is about. At the original link is a pretty good discription:

Atomic Bamboozle - A Jan Haaken Production

As political pressure mounts in the US to meet net zero carbon goals, the nuclear power industry makes its case for a nuclear “renaissance.” This documentary by NECESSITY Director Jan Haaken follows activists as they expose the true costs of the new small nuclear reactor designs.

It does seem to be about somewhat larger nuclear generators than those discussed here.

The video linked in the articles first paragraph was just as scary to me the first couple of times I viewed it. It is definitely an animation predicting the future even though much of the footage looks very real. For people of my generation, trucking around a factory-built nuclear generator is very scary, as is trucking around nuclear fuel down some fairly small country roads. Or operating a nuclear generator on the deck of a boat. Surely they are just waiting for a truck accident or hurricane to happen - and then what? Well, that's what the company has to show before they start producing them. Yeah it might be almost nothing - no problem - losing a nuclear generator overboard. But that what they have to show before I'd be happy with it.

It was an interesting article to write. Originally it was writing "on deadline" - the first news (Hunterbrook Media) was announced on Friday morning and I figured I had at most until that Monday. Without responses from either Hunterbrook or NNE, and with almost no time for reflection, I got a bit nervous and subtly suggested to JPxG that we could pull it - so that's why this took so long to actually publish. It held up though quite well, IMHO, with little updating needed. Thanks again. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:46, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

American nuclear submarines have successfully operated for decades without major issues, so the concept is feasible. The reactors on subs must be pretty small sized. Again, I think the problem is money. The Department of Defense has an essentially unlimited piggy bank so can spend whatever it takes to keep their personnel safe. On the other hand, you can count on private industry to cut corners, and then pass the costs off to the public when trouble happens. – wbm1058 (talk) 21:59, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]