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Google commits to buying power generated by nuclear-energy startup Kairos Power

(www.wsj.com)
589 points atomic128 | 1 comments | 14 Oct 24 19:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.549s | source
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thecrumb ◴[14 Oct 24 19:26 UTC] No.41840964[source]▶
I love the 'ideally' in the dry cask storage article...

"Ideally, the steel cylinder provides leak-tight containment of the spent fuel."

Also guessing that article is woefully out of date since it mentions:

"The NRC estimated that many of the nuclear power plants in the United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind"

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jeffbee ◴[14 Oct 24 20:34 UTC] No.41841667[source]▶
Safety claims of novel, unproven fission designs always come with a crazy footnote. Pebble bed reactors are completely safe, if they are never exposed to water or oxygen, which is a pretty hilarious caveat for planet Earth.
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vlovich123 ◴[14 Oct 24 21:57 UTC] No.41842456[source]▶
What are the disclaimers for molten salt reactors?
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1. aidenn0 ◴[14 Oct 24 22:39 UTC] No.41842914[source]▶
If you can contain the highly corrosive, very hot, molten salts, then they are fairly safe, but you do need to guarantee that the path to the dump-tanks is undisturbed by whatever disaster is necessitating their use.

A big non-safety disclaimer is that the proposed advantage of online refueling is still largely theoretical.