Comments by "David Elliott" (@davidelliott5843) on "Could Space-Based Solar Save The World? | Answers With Joe" video.

  1. People complain about Starlink sats the size of a table. Something miles across would be a massive blot on the skyscape. Not to mention the reflected messing with nighttime temperatures. None of it could be recycled at end of life. Not to mention the rocket fuel to put it up there.
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  2. Joe Scott. Please get Ian Scot (presumably no relation) to explain how his Moltex Waste burner plant works. He’s on Titans of Nuclear. His plant in Canada is fully engineered and ready for construction. It’s expected on line by 2020. That’s really fast by nuke standards. The plant runs in the fast spectrum burning high level irradiated fuel from a PWR next door.
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  3. Because beaming microwaves down from space won’t burn out the ozone layer.
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  4. Charles Okonkwo Nuclear waste is microscopic compared to the waste created by all other options including renewables. But Moltex Energy are building a plant that will be fuelled by high level nuclear waste. Instead of using just 3% of the available energy, Moltex will extract 99%. That means 30x less waste and what they do create has a 30 year 1/2 life instead of a 30,000 year 1/2 life.
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  5. Charles Okonkwo Fukushima happened because light water reactors are fundamentally hazardous. The molten salts have no pressure vessel and as the fuel is molten they cannot melt down. If the reactor gets too hot the salt expands and the traction slows. The worst case would have the reactor sitting there perfectly harmlessly until the fuel runs out. Safety sorted Waste sorted Cost - cheaper than coal.
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  6. Charles Okonkwo We absolutely do have a solution to high level nuke waste. Convert it to a salt and burn it in a molten salt reactor. The conversion is a simple chemical process. The reactors are intrinsically safe.
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  7. Corey Micallef You listed waste management solutions but the best of all is the Moltex SSR waste burner fast reactor.
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  8. marker902 Except the waste product is not weapons grade uranium. Waste burners are fast reactors that burn the waste produced by ordinary PWRs like Wd have all over the place. Thorium reactors breed U233 within the reactor then move it to the core to make more energy. The fuel is 99% used against just 3% for a PWR. U233 is radioactive and unstable. It would fry the bomb and anyone trying to build/operate it. Plutonium is produced when uranium is burnt but unlike solid fuel reactors where removal can be exactly timed, the Pu 239 in a molten salt is mixed up with all the other isotopes. Pu240 is a great bomb poison and it’s hugely costly to separate. Last of all countries that already have nuke bombs would not be using molten salts to make more. They are just rubbish for that job and they already have bomb making plants.
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  9. Claudio Ricardo Diaz Moltex has a fully engineered molten salt reactor for burning high level nuclear waste. It’s expected on line by 2028 in Canada. Progress is limited purely by the pace of regulatory processes. That’s slow to normal people but uber fast by nuclear standards.
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  10. Alain Duchesneau Ditto Moltex who will be burning nuclear waste in a fast spectrum molten salt reactor.
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  11. Dildo Shwagins PWRs use just 3% of the energy available in the fuel. That waste has a 1/2 life of 30,000 years. Molten salts including the Moltex waste burner will extract 99% of the available energy. That’s 30 times less waste for the same power output. Furthermore the waste has a 1/2 life of 30 years. That’s easily engineered.
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  12. marker902 Nothing is impossible but U233 is highly radioactive. It would fry the operators and the bomb’s own electronics. Not to mention it’s radiation signature visible from space. It’s also unstable and unlikely to fission correctly. In a thorium molten salt reactor the U233 is never removed from the reactor nuclear island. It’s just moved across from the blanket to the core.
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  13. Barefoot Moltex are doing that with a peaker nuke plant. The reactor heats molten salt thermal stores. 1000MW of reactor drives up to 3000MW of steam turbines making power when it’s needed and none when it’s not needed. There is no untested engineering.
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