this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Even ignoring AI datacenter builds, we still need clean energy. I would be all for nuclear fission if it were at all economically viable. It just isn't.
@frezik there is an economic case for three nuclear reactor applications.
Medical isotopes need to come from somewhere, and so far as I'm aware, you can't do all of them with particle accelerators.
Marine power; your 250,000 DWT bulk transport or large container ship pollute significantly, can't go solar, and marine nuclear is not obviously a bad technical option. (They can maybe go with some sort of fuel cell, but that's not developed tech.)
High-latitude baseline power.
@kgMadee2
Medical isotopes don't necessarily need to be created in power reactors.
High-latitudes is a very limited application. Very few people live in areas where solar isn't viable. They also tend to have a lot of space for wind power and some potential geothermal. Long distance HVDC lines shouldn't be discounted, either.
Marine power is where I hope SMRs actually work out.
helps to be the US Navy and not be worried about costs
ship-sized SMR power is quite expensive!
iirc us navy loads their reactors with 93% enriched uranium, the same grade that is used in (american) nukes (and also in couple of very special use cases like oak ridge high flux reactor fuel). can't hand this out just like that. one fuel load is expected to last entire ship lifetime. the less enriched grade you use, the bigger reactor becomes and refueling has to be more frequent
Trump was ready to give some Sam Altman project highly enriched uranium, though I'm not clear on whether that was 20% (already considered a serious proliferation risk) or full bomb-grade 95%.
uranium or plutonium, because i've heard of some plutonium that was slated to be disposed of this way 20 years ago and just sat there unused (not that saltman has facilities or people to do anything with it)
plutonium, looks like:
US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium - Oct 21st https://www.ft.com/content/2fbbc621-405e-4a29-850c-f0079b116216 https://archive.is/Pc949
...
may I just say:
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST
NO SHIT
no you can't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium_Management_and_Disposition_Agreement
russians did their part, they basically gave that plutonium to their nuclear engineers for new things development to fuck around with and got a couple of working fast reactors out of that. americans did something that is very mckinsey coded and debated whether to burn it in pwr as mox like the french do or mix it with some magic powder and hide it in mountain which would be basically the same, right, and russians didn't like it because you can reverse that, and it ended up with americans doing nothing, then russians withdrew (and they were right in doing this)
tldr diplomacy by committee
weird that EDF didn't want to buy it, maybe they also have surplus plutonium (reactor grade, so of worse quality)
The conclusion of the NS Savannah was that it would have been economical after the oil crisis of the 1970s caused a price spike in fuel costs. Ports also need facilities and training to handle nuclear fuel. Once you have that, it's perfectly viable.
Unlike energy generation on land, there isn't a lot of alternatives for decarbonizing marine transport.
I'm sure there will be no issues setting up nuclear fuel handling at ports worldwide. Well, maybe one or two.