Comments by "Bob thebomb" (@bobthebomb1596) on "Sabine Hossenfelder" channel.

  1.  @chapter4travels  I never said otherwise, but you stated that renewables cannot provide industrial process heat and that is wrong. Solar - thermal tends to be used in areas with plentiful sunlight (e.g. desert areas) and can be linked to molten salt storage just like the reactor described. Geothermal can also provide process heat.
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  2. Solar-thermal can provide process heat, but not solar PV.
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  3. There was a rocket design that would have used nuclear bombs for propulsion. Orion.
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  4. Plutonium is only a problem if it is further refined to "weapons grade" plutonium, otherwise it is reactor fuel. For example, the UK holds around 115 tons of reactor grade plutonium, but only 3 tons or so of weapons grade plutonium. The UK also holds around 25 tons of foreign plutonium (mostly owned by Japan). It would be relatively easy to establish authorised, highly monitored reprocessing facilities in countries with suitable experience to act as reprocessing hubs.
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  5. Which civil reactors run on "Super enriched uranium?"
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  6.  @EbenBransome  I call a system which allows water to flow from one compartment into another poorly designed.
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  7.  @cestmoi1262  Except it wasn't, it was poorly designed.
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  8. It doesn't really matter if it takes fifteen years to build a reactor as by then, some of the interim PV and wind turbines will be reaching end of life and need replacing. So replace them with something reliable that gives operational capacities in the 80+% range and will last for 60+ years.
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  9. No.
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  10. Once we locate an available source of U238 in space, yes. Would be handy to power space ships and off-world colonies. If you mean ship U238 to space for processing, why would we?
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  11. IF you have the means to siphon it from the reactor without being spotted and work on it without killing yourself.
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  12.  @chapter4travels  It is not completely impractical, it is however situational. Would you install it in Norway? Of course not, but you might in certain regions of Spain, Mexico or the middle east.
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  13.  @RasmusSchultz  No you are not wrong. Molten salt storage has been proposed for other reactor types and solar collection arrays. In the former case it is best suited to high temperature reactors such as those using sodium, lead or helium as coolant or those using molten salt as the fuel carrier.
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  14. See, it's all down to beer. Any time is beer-time, no illusions required.
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  15. Most people probably assume white holes are the far end of the wormhole.
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  16. And Ben Bova
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  17. Not an issue. If a country wants to make nuclear weapons the only things stopping it are cost and the reaction of other countries.
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  18. Excellent video, its good to see some actual figures given.
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  19. BTW, Plutonium sells for ~$4,000 per gram.
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  20. Has there ever been an update on an old idea of using ultra sonics to break chemical bonds? I believe that the theory was to set up destructive harmonics in a similar manner to how bridges may be damaged by marching soldiers. I always assumed it fell into the "cold fusion" camp - nice in theory but impossible in practice.
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  21.  @brothermine2292  Hard to do it without being noticed either. First you need to own the reactor, hard to position your robots by a reactor you don't own without being noticed. Then you require somewhere to process the protactinium and separate out the uranium 233. Again, hard to do without being noticed. Then you require a facility to construct devices. If you own the reactor you have to prevent the IAEA noticing you are syphoning off protactinium, not easy in these days of easy, remote sensing. Finally, if a nation state wants to construct a bomb, they can just do it. All they require is money and the will to stick two fingers up to the international community.
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  22. Metallic
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  23. I will point every commenter who talks like fusion is just around the corner to this video.
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  24.  @michaelmr101  Actually they are desperate for more plutonium for space probes, unfortunately most of it is "The wrong sort of plutonium"
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  25. Even if aliens are using quantum communications, at some point they must have passed through our tech level and the signals from that period would still be out there surely?
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  26. Not thorium based and submarine reactors are designed to run on highly enriched fuel.
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  27. It's not just about generating cost. You have to factor in reliability of supply, operating capacity, grid stability, backup. All these come at a cost which is often left out of RE calculations.
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  28.  @TimothyWhiteheadzm  Agreed that the major negative affecting nuclear is politics (and technically illiterate protestors)
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  29. If it is possible to produce gamavoltaic batteries, just how high in the EM spectrum can they go? Can you make one that works on cosmic rays fer example?
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  30.  @Gunni1972  Close enough 🙃
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  31. That's why modern reactors are moving to passive safety, requiring no human input in the initial phase.
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  32.  @KenOtwell  A nuclear plant. Energy 24/7, 1/10th the area (your figures) and no requirement for power storage.
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  33.  @KenOtwell  Spent fuel storage does not require a huge area of land., certainly not enough to close such a large gap.
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  34.  @KenOtwell  Which is why all new rectors should be Gen III/IV designs. TMI, Fukushima and Chernobyl were all early reactor designs (Chernobyl did not even have a containment building) which would not be licensed now. Chernobyl, by far the worst nuclear accident to occur, was also the result of a unique chain of events. It did not occur during routine operation.
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  35.  @michaelmr101  Which means that the nuclear "waste" we already have is just fuel waiting to be used.
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  36.  @tommihommi1  No, it is not. Such facilities are monitored by international inspectors,
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  37.  @tommihommi1  Read my last point. It is pretty much impossible to develop nuclear weapons in secret. There are just too many clues for those with the right tools to look for them.
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  38.  @tommihommi1  I don't need to read up on it. You should read up on how much people knew of their efforts.
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  39.  @vultureTX001  I believe that the actual test shown was a British test and that the flask contained steel rods and pressurised water.
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  40.  @operator8014  Yes but few have and most of them are already nuclear capable. I have no issue with any country reprocessing waste as long as they sign up to inspections. It would likely be simpler and more economic though if just a few nations undertook the task.
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  41. What changes due to human activity?
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  42. How would they be vulnerable to terrorist attack? Know a lot of terrorists with access to missiles capable of reaching targets in geostationary orbit?
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  43.  @frednewman2162  Someone watches too much TV
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  44.  @brothermine2292  Based on what? During that decay the fertile material also contains U232, a hard gamma emitter, good luck hiding that and keeping your people alive without the backing of a state behind you.
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  45.  @markotrieste  Proliferation is overblown. Anyone can make a bomb if they have the will and the cash to do it. Trying to hide it under the guise of a civil program is much harder. Just ask Iran.
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  46.  @cestmoi1262  Don't be a dick. The issue with the Titanic design is well known.
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  47. Can we have a video on current (and potential) technologies for the manufacture of x-ray, gamma and potentially cosmic ray photovoltaic power generation please?
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  48. Excellent article. One of my pet hates (looking at you BBC website) are articles that are padded out with text taken from other articles on the same subject. When you boil it down there can be less than three sentences that are actually new information and they are usually shallow.
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  49.  @seppwurzel8212  Easy, store the waste in the same place we obtain the fuel, underground.
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  50. Why would anyone hijack them? In most cases there will be no fuel in them during transportation. Where there are "swappable cores" the fuel will be low activity and useless without all the ancillary equipment to run the reactor. Terrorists might go for a "used" reactor carrying spent fuel, but where these leave the site at all they will be as highly guarded as current spent fuel movements.
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