/sci/ - Science & Math

In before Fukushima pics.

The French have a longstanding love affair with nuclear and Fukushima seems to have done nothing to diminish it, unlike it has for Germany. The French will push forward with nuclear no matter how loudly the anti-nuke crowd bleats at them.

Wow. That. can't be a good idea. One accident and all of the oceans will be polluted.

I'm actually quite surprised nobody has thought of doing this previously.

>>3254733
Germany has declared they will shut down all nuclear plants by 2022. I think this is actually really wise. This means the deadline is a long time after the current politicians step down from power. Then whoever is in power then will begin pushing nuclear again, likely quoting the rise in electricity prices, and people will be far less stubborn about it. This is just a passing phase, while people are still worked up about Fukushima.

>>3254740

>>Wow. That. can't be a good idea. One accident and all of the oceans will be polluted.

It spreads less in the ocean than in air, and the radiation itself is stopped dead by water. Water is excellent radiation shielding and coolant. It's why they were frantically dumping ocean water on the Fukushima reactors as they melted down.

Undersea reactors below 200 feet would be immune from storm action on the surface, and provided they are very slightly positively buoyant and anchored via something flexible to weights on the sea floor, the shock from a quake would not transfer to the structure itself. It should also go without saying that neither hurricanes nor tornados would affect them. They are uniquely well protected from natural disasters of all kinds.

TRIPFAGS, TRIPFAGS EVERYWHERE

>>3254748
Not to mention, its only specifically talking about the already ancient nuclear power plants. By then it'd be ridiculous to keep them going for that long. Also whats hilarious is they probably wont be any less dependent on nuclear power, they'll very probably just import more cheap electricity from france without nuclear power plants.

>>3254763
>Paying attention to name fields
You havent been here very long have you? If you had, all the tripfags start blending together and you stop giving a fuck. Every year new tripfags come, are trolled over, forgotten, and it repeats. I mean honestly, does anyone remember toxic jester or the other fags from the previous year of 2007? Or hell, 2010?

Sure you can't scuba dive to it, but couldn't you just rig up some depth charges?

>>3254772

Dude it's the summer, give me a break!

>>3254776

>>Sure you can't scuba dive to it, but couldn't you just rig up some depth charges?

If you can get a ship to it without being noticed. It's still more secure than a reactor on land.

Also, in case anyone's wondering about the cost of laying cable to get the power back to shore from 200+ miles out, there actually already exists a subsea power grid complete with seafloor transformer stations, built by companies like Siemens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9PbkwSYxpE

It's used to supply power and communication between various oil rigs and between those rigs and the shore. But these reactors could be positioned to make use of this same grid to deliver power to coastal cities.

>>3254714
>300 ft is too deep for scuba
Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's not. The recs advise against going more than 100 as recreational scuba-er, but they commonly publish charts for N2 levels going down to 400 ft. I forget if this requires something other than the usual atmospheric mix or not, but it's a blatant falsehood that you can't scuba to 300 ft.

>>3254801

>>I forget if this requires something other than the usual atmospheric mix or not, but it's a blatant falsehood that you can't scuba to 300 ft.

Yes, it requires a helium/oxygen or nitrogen/oxygen mixture. That's what I meant, it's inaccessible to recreational scuba, so some schmuck with a store bought setup couldn't reach this deep.

The reason the limit for recreational scuba is 100 feet is because below 125 feet or so, the concentration of oxygen in ordinary air becomes toxic.

Also, in order to stay down long enough to accomplish anything they would require decompression equipment in order to come back up alive. Although if they're radical Muslims that may not be their primary concern.

Anyway, hope that clears up what I meant.

>>3254801
you can't scuba to 300ft

>>3254758

Unless you live near or by the sea... which most of the world. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's causing damage.

The ocean dumping mentality and nuclear power are both dead ends from the '60s, and should be treated as such.

>>3254811
>nuclear power
>dead end

oh boy

0/10

>>3254811

>>3254811
1 word, thorium.

TEDxYYC - Kirk Sorensen - Thorium
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw

Energy From Thorium: A Nuclear Waste Burning Liquid Salt Thorium Reactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8

>>3254811

>>Unless you live near or by the sea... which most of the world. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's causing damage.

I don't think these will melt down in the first place for reasons explained earlier. If they did it would be a disaster, but we can't abandon all progress because there exists *potential* for disaster.

There are pros and cons, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. There are greater consequences if disaster occurs, but there's dramatically lower odds that a disaster will occur in the first place due to differences between this setup and one on land.

>>The ocean dumping mentality and nuclear power are both dead ends from the '60s, and should be treated as such.

I absolutely agree with the first part which is why at no point did I suggest we dump nuclear waste in the ocean. However I don't agree that nuclear power is a dead end, and I don't see how anyone else could think this either unless they think we must inevitably take huge steps backwards in terms of energy use, something I don't think we can tolerate as a country. We need more, not less, and nuclear is the way to get it.

>worried about terrorists bombing nuclear power plants
It may be just my lack of knowledge, but isnt the dangerous stuff hidden behind dozens of feet of lead and cement? If they could bomb hard enough to crack through all that we have more problems than just the power plant melting down.

>>3254814
>>3254819

Chernobyl - strike one
Three Mile Island - strike two
Fukushima - strike three

Nuclear power is an insane, dangerous way of boiling water. Most governments can't use it correctly, neither can for profit corporations.

>>3254832
Live happily in your ingorance.

>>3254832
That's exactly why I suggested thorium and the liquid salt reactor. No more boiling water or building giant pressure vessels. Being able to be passively cooled in emergencies is cool too.

>>3254832

>>Nuclear power is an insane, dangerous way of boiling water.

Less dangerous than literally every other form of power generation:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

>>3254832
Do you have any idea how many people have died for coal? How much damage it has caused?

We could have a Chernobyl every week for a decade and not cause as much damage as coal has.

>>3254845
>We could have a Chernobyl every week for a decade and not cause as much damage as coal has.

>>3254850
Do you know where we get coal?

We've been mining coal for centuries.

A lot of those mining methods killed people and destroyed land. We have rendered more land uninhabitable in Pennsylvania for more decades than Chernobyl, and it will be uninhabitable a LOT longer than Chernobyl will.

Yes, I -DO- know what I'm talking about.

Eat poop, kiddo.

>>3254835

Can do.

>>3254841
>>3254845

Are you saying that we should just keep taking risks because it haven't bitten us on our collective add yet? Global contamination has already happened and there are hundreds of acres of land that will be uninhabitable for centuries. I don't want this to happen in my backyard.

If you really want future energy, look at solar, tidal, wind, and geothermal. Coal and uranium burn out, the sun won't any time soon.

>>3254868
We'll probably run out of thorium long after the sun burns out, for the record...

(Ok, I don't actually know that, but it's plausible, which alone is amazing.)

>>3254868

>>Are you saying that we should just keep taking risks because it haven't bitten us on our collective add yet?

But it has, and yet it killed almost nobody. Counterintuitively it's simply a less deadly form of power generation than anything else we have.

>>Global contamination has already happened and there are hundreds of acres of land that will be uninhabitable for centuries. I don't want this to happen in my backyard.

You don't live in the USSR circa 1986, so it won't. We build reactors a LOT more robustly and cleverly now than we used to. There has never been a Generation 4+ reactor meltdown, and there never will be a Thorium reactor meltdown.

>>If you really want future energy, look at solar, tidal, wind, and geothermal. Coal and uranium burn out, the sun won't any time soon.

I believe all of those are valid solutions, but not usable everywhere, and insufficient to meet all of our energy needs. How do we expand power generation when we've used up all of the land suitable for solar and wind, and all of the geological hotspots suitable for geothermal? There aren't many places left to install hydro power that don't already have it. What then?

>(Unless they somehow master the art of DROPPING SHIT IN THE OCEAN)

>>3254864

Wow, you are completely brainwashed by big nuclear - a subsidiary if big coal and big oil.

Nuclear power not safe, clean, or cheap. It's a ploy to bilk the government out of billions on pointless projects and maintenance. Renewables don't have the pesky problem of blowing up or rendering land unusable. Try rating no to the radioactive kool-aid sometime.

>>3254868
>look at solar,

Lots of toxins in the production of solar cells.
Trying to generate enough solarcells to power America would turn our atmosphere into an acid bath like Venus.

>tidal,

Would only supply the coasts, and manufacturing enough generators would be toxic, not to mention the ecological damage it would do to the oceans to build enough to be feasible.

>wind,

You need a lot of VERY highly refined parts to make a wind generator, and most places they'rte a waste.

>and geothermal.

I'm okay with this, but again the locations are limited.

Basically, you want to kill the earth by doing to the planet exactly what you petulantly claim nuclear would.

>>3254917
Again, thorium has none of those problems, and has the potential to be ludicrously cheap.

>>3254917
You could get killed walking down the street for a goddamn soda. Nothing is safe, but nuclear is a hell of a lot safer that the glass dick you're sucking.

>>3254911

From where? If it's a boat, how will they get close before the coastguard devastates their nutsacks with maximum thunder?

If it's a plane, they won't get anywhere close in anything larger than perhaps a cessna, from which they won't be able to drop any explosive charge substantial enough to breach the hull.

In fact, I'd wager they're designing around such concerns with an exceptionally thick, explosion resistant hull. If our own Navy wanted to crack it they could, but I don't see anyone else managing to.

>>3254832
>Nuclear is the only source of power that has every produced environmental damage

>>3254918

>>Lots of toxins in the production of solar cells.

Actually although I'm with you on nuclear, this isn't true anymore. Older polycrystalline panels containing arsenides and other toxic chemicals have been supplanted by nontoxic copper-iridium-gallium monocrystalline panels and thin film solar.

It's come a long way but it's still suitable only for home use and not utility scale use. We'll be using heliostats for that, like the ones Google's been buying up as of late, mainly because they have a very efficient method of producing uninterrupted power overnight without the use of batteries or uphill water resevoirs or flywheels or anything like that. It's cool stuff, molten salt boilers make utility scale solar concentration via mirrors a practical way of powering cities.

The public needs more education on Thorium power!

>>3254971
>The public on reading that
>Too long to read and boring, full of confusing stuff only eggheads would talk about and they're probably just confusing me so i cant say things back but i know im right regardless because my dad told me so and stuff

>>3254979
Hmmm, ok, well in that case. The public needs more education! Period!

>>3254988
Nope, we're just going to spend 3% of our total government budget on education, 1.4 trillion on the army to blow up sandniggers in t shirts and ak-47s and then only give the nerds at nasa 18.7 billion.

And people wonder whats wrong with america

>>3254932

>>3255008

>>and then only give the nerds at nasa 18.7 billion

The NOAA, who operates one of only three undersea research stations in the world (the other two are tiny, spartan 2 man habitats owned by universities) has an annual budget of only 5 and a half billion.

The ISS is ten times the size of the Aquarius. Something is seriously wrong with that. I'm not saying NASA deserves less, they certainly deserve more, but NOAA is being shafted far more severely, and we can do a lot more valuable science with a deep sea hydrothermal vent research station than we can with the ISS at this point.

Pic related: What NOAA could do with NASA's budget.

Won't ever happen, no matter how safe it is because of scared crowds.

>inb4
>Tsunami kills thousands
>Nuclear plant is fucked up

>Reaction
>We need to stop nuclear power at once !
>Rebuild unprotected dwellings on the shore.

>>3254740
Have you never heard of the saying
> The solution to pollution is dilution
?

Also remember the radioactive material exists whether we dig it up from the Earth or not. A small drop in the (deep) ocean isn't going to mean that much for most people... Nor does it change the amount of radioactive material already in the ocean significantly...

>German posters online/youtube
>Too scared to even discuss LFTR
>Even on the issues of uranium breeders, claim Fukushima killed A life with no evidence.

*facepalm*

No wonder... All this time I thought Bill Kaultiz was gay... nope.. he's a Alpha Male for Germans... The EMO GUY THAT TAKES IT IN THE ASS BY RICH PRODUCERS... Wow Germany. Wow.

Germany in the 1980s was building MSRs and very promising stuff. Now they will scrap everything. Germany was cooler in the 80s anyhow. Major Tom...

This looks good, but
1: Maintenance would be difficult, probably meaning no government would approve it and therefore it would have to be placed out of the 200 mile strip of water around land masses
2. The DPRK probably already have the equipment for saturation diving (China definitely already have it and are chums with them) meaning the reactors couldn't be placed off of China or Korea

Definitely interested in the possibility of the vessels being available to civilians, even if they do end up well out of our kinds of price range. These would have a lot of interesting applications

>>3254917
All that you've said is "HERP DERP NUCLEAR POWER IS EXPENSIVE AND SOME NUCLEAR PLANTS BLEW UP A FEW TIMES HERP DERP".
These do not outweigh the pros of nuclear power, as nuclear plant failures are extremely rare and coal-fired plant failures and mine failures are very common.
Granted, a nuclear plant failure would cause considerably more damage than a coal-fired plant failure, but so would a plane crash compared to a car crash. Planes are expensive, nor are the clean at all. WE SHOULD ALL STOP USING PLANES THEN HERP DERP.
Besides, wind and hydroelectricity are not all that good for the environment either. Hydroelectric dams have stopped up the Colorado River, and if Wind Power were to expand to create power for a large part of the world, wind currents may slow down or stop, resulting in major climatic change. Wind power, so far, is only a gimmick.

>>3255285

>>Won't ever happen, no matter how safe it is because of scared crowds.

It may happen in France specifically because they are staunchly pro nuclear and a sovreign country. Scared crowds in the US and Japan can't force them not to.

If they don't for whatever reason it'd be a shame, check this out; in 2004 a small undersea restaurant and hotel called Ithaa survived a tsunami which devastated coastal resorts without itself suffering any damage whatsoever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaa

"The tsunami which followed the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake topped out at 0.31m below the staircase entrance, and caused no damage to the restaurant."

A small hotel/restaurant in only 15 feet of water can withstand a tsunami that wrecked coastal villas. A nuclear reactor 300 feet deep would never even notice a tsunami or hurricane.

>>3255338
No, in America, France, UK or Japan. We think...

"Okay if we shut down our reactors, we will have to start importing more oil/nat gas. And the towns that run the state owned/private owned industries will go bankrupt"

"Okay if we give our hard earned GDP to people who hate us... what will happen?"

Shit on those countries I listed all you like, but atleast they are sane on energy policy. America, with all its flaws, is sitting nice. We have conservatives that aren't afraid of nuclear, and we have liberals who want LFTR.

Also a message to Europoors who are too busy buttfucking:

Stop pretending a 20meter tsunami with 6 mile reach with an effect region 200 miles long is is casual.

A tsunami putting a fishing boat on a 3 story building is not 'something' that happens now and again. It's fucking rare. Oceanologists blew their fucking mind when they discovered a small boat 1 miles inland in Indonesia. Sumatra was 5m high.

If you died in Miyagi towns on the 4th floor due to drowning... that is not a 'regular' tidewave. The nuclear issue has really overshadowed the actual disaster and records made.

>>3255349
>America, with all its flaws, is sitting nice.
uh, nope. Sourcing 10% of your oil from a country you're at war with , another 18% from a third world nation that can't afford schools via an incredibly, constantly leaking pipe system, and 50% from a socialist nation that hates you is neither safe nor sitting nice. A revolution in Niger or a change in Venezuela's foreign policy and you have a massive short fall.

>>3255359
The thing is, if you intend to build a nuclear reactor in an area with intense tectonic activity, you *can't* build it without sufficient tsunami proofing. Fukushima Daiichi had some tsunami proofing, but not enough to stand a tsunami that they knew, even when the plant was built, could have happened at any point. I agree completely that the disaster has been pushed aside by it.

Why is it that technology pertaining to energy such as this one is always refused? Can it not accept a no-bullshit policy and be implemented without public opinions and options? What are the disadvantages to the LFTR technology?

>>3255591

>>Can it not accept a no-bullshit policy and be implemented without public opinions and options?

Immigrate to China. It is a glorious technocratic wonderland (Unless you're poor in which case it is a bleak hellish dystopia) where 8 out of the 9 top government officials are/were scientists, religion is banned, and the state is pursuing LFTR, electric vehicles, robotics, manned spaceflight and massive renewable energy projects more aggressively than any other country on Earth.

It's advancing rapidly, it has a knowledgeable and pro-science leadership and it has a vision of the future we can all get behind. The minor downside is that it's monstrously heartless towards the poor and tolerates no political dissent. Your call.

>>3255619
Doesn't China have a reputation for falsifying results? got the impression that they're double plus ungood when it comes to giving unbiased results

>>3255619

Damn, it hurts to live in this world. Going to stick with Canada until seemingly glorious PRC invades in the near-future. I am surprised however, at the amount of people defying all nuclear power, without learning of LFT reactors.

>>3255627

>>Doesn't China have a reputation for falsifying results? got the impression that they're double plus ungood when it comes to giving unbiased results

They do more science overall, and more of it is fraudulent. Proportionally they do about the same amount of good science, while also doing a whole lot more bad science.

>>3255643
ahah. Makes sense.

>>3255630
I think it is an emotional response, rather than a rational one.

I remember a story from /sci/ of a son informing his father that smoke detectors had radioactive isotopes in them and his father refusing to believe it until he brought a Geiger counter and showed his father indisputably that it was radioactive. This prompted his father to throw out all the smoke detectors and replace them with non-radioactive photoelectric detectors. [At least, I believe that is what he replaced them with...]

This may only be an anecdote, but I think we have all seen first hand that many people simply react with their emotional, rather than rational side when it comes to anything radioactive.

>>3255657

Will nuclear technology ever get a 'good' light in the general public, then? Will people get over the abhorrent silliness of their emotional side and think rationally?

>>3255666
When it comes to the choice to giving up their iphones and xbox 360s, or having nuclear energy, you know which ones the derps will take.

>>3255673
Those two things are totally related.

>>3255666
Nuclear isn't by far the cheapest nor the most politically stable choice. You will always be dependent on your suppliers of fuel. And growing thread of terrorism will boost the price for safety measures - I'm not talking about natural disasters I'm talking about deliberate sabotages. It is necessary to mention that in the past there wasn't such thread so in the past safety expenses were negligible. This might not be the case in future.

Also prices for solar are dropping very rapidly so if today 1GW solar seems a sci-fi in 10-20 years it might be cheaper than coal or hydro.

>>3255707

>>Also prices for solar are dropping very rapidly so if today 1GW solar seems a sci-fi in 10-20 years it might be cheaper than coal or hydro.

It doesn't matter how cheap it becomes, it's still useless at night. Heliostats fix that somewhat by storing thermal energy overnight for uninterrupted power, but can still leave you without power on cloudy days.

>>3254714
This seems very sensible. In fact, you should be able to make the pressure containment much smaller and less robust, since you are already under lots of pressure at that depth. The 1 atm. section is just a small portion of the overall installation, right? What is the timeline on getting these prototyped?

Vive la France!

>>3257691

>>This seems very sensible. In fact, you should be able to make the pressure containment much smaller and less robust, since you are already under lots of pressure at that depth. The 1 atm. section is just a small portion of the overall installation, right?

It's a control room and a series of corridors around the reactor for maintinence access. But yes the internal reactor pressure vessel shares the outer wall with the main pressure vessel so as to leverage the benefit of being underwater.

>>What is the timeline on getting these prototyped?

So far as I know they're constructing the special ship that will be used to haul the reactors out to the sinking site before they bother building the reactors themselves. Another company will be building those:

"These reactors are designed and built by Areva, the CEA and DCNS under Areva TA prime contractorship using design concepts that have proven their reliability and safety."

http://en.dcnsgroup.com/energy/civil-nuclear-engineering/flexblue/

We should build nuclear reactors in schools and hospitals ... just to be safe.

Yeah, because it seems enough people haven't seen Sea Lab 2021. We really need people living under the water where we can't see what they're doing. Smart idea.

>>3257772

>>Yeah, because it seems enough people haven't seen Sea Lab 2021.

A fictional cartoon.

>>We really need people living under the water where we can't see what they're doing. Smart idea.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. It's a bad idea because you can't see what they're doing? Are you able to peer into your local nuclear power plant and see what they're up to? How is one underwater any different? Those who need to be able to monitor it can do so remotely, as well as access it via submersible for maintinence and repairs.

It's the same as a reactor on land, but there are no zoning hurdles, no NIMBYs (except perhaps greenpeace) you're surrounded by coolant and additional pressure which aids in containment...I can literally see no downsides to this.

>mfw all I want is my own underwater mansion in lawless waters where I can do whatever the fuck I want.

>>3257792

A fictional cartoon about a reactor that blows up at the end of each episode. Don't act like this can't happen.

And the reactor first described in the OP wasn't able to be gotten into unless they need you too. Talk about holing up terrorists or convicts to hide them or let them plan attacks against the surface.

This really is a bad idea. You are trying to create different societies of people, one who favor the land and ones who favor living under the ocean. We need less dividing us, not more.

>>3257824

There's a US company which makes undersea homes for the obscenely wealthy.

The company is called US Submarines and the product is called the H2ome. It's something like 5.5 million. Pic related.

>>3257833
Once the land is all filled up and people can't stand it anymore they will move out to the underwaters. Mostly because it'll still be cheaper than space.

>>3257865

>implying it wouldn't be cheaper for people to live in computers

>>3257865

No... they'll just start killing each other.

Don't be naive.

German here.
We shit on all your nuclear pipedreams, because however safe you build them, you'll still drown in tons of radioactive waste.
We haven't found ONE single site to store radioactive waste in over 50 years, nor will we ever find such a place.
Enjoy your radioactive glow assholes.

>>3257833

>>A fictional cartoon about a reactor that blows up at the end of each episode. Don't act like this can't happen.

With Thorium it can't. With Uranium it can, but it's less likely and would be dramatically less harmful. Why do you think they doused Fukushima in ocean water?

>>And the reactor first described in the OP wasn't able to be gotten into unless they need you too. Talk about holing up terrorists or convicts to hide them or let them plan attacks against the surface.

It uses a proprietary docking ring. Only FlexBlue owns submersibles capable of docking with it.

>>This really is a bad idea. You are trying to create different societies of people, one who favor the land and ones who favor living under the ocean. We need less dividing us, not more.

When people call the ocean home, they will no longer be apathetic about trawling, ocean dumping and the decline of the oceanic ecosystem. You'll have subsea NIMBYs complaining about the declining biodiversity around their colony, and indirectly exerting a positive environmental pressure.

The world is ready to expand into the seas. Even private individuals are building modest homesteads (pic related). The technology is commoditized, cheap and widely available. Nothing can prevent it at this point, people who want to live in the sea have the means to do so, and so they will.

>>3257900

Holy fuck, ferngully, you got some crazy dreams there. Do you ever go outside or watch the news?

>>3257865
The land will be filled up? What kind of weed are you smoking? Even if some highly densely populated areas get too crowded, we just build higher instead of underwater. Cause it's cheaper, it's easier and noboy wants to fucking spend his life in the sea.

>>3257918

>>Do you ever go outside or watch the news?

Yup: http://www.myfoxorlando.com/dpp/news/offbeat/011711-brevard-couple-envisions-undersea-colony-by-2015

We could never feed the amount of people it would take to literally fill all the land space. We're talking several hundred billion people.

We're never going to live in the water. Seaquest was a shitty greenpeace star trek clone that had zero good ideas.

We're also not going to space. There's simply not enough interest. Baseball was more important than landing on the moon to most people.

>>3257897
except you can burn radioactive waste in a long-wave reactor

>>3257929

>fox news

You're not helping your case...

>>3257946

>>We're never going to live in the water. Seaquest was a shitty greenpeace star trek clone that had zero good ideas.

The Atlantica Expeditions founder mway disagree. He is pictured here in a living module prototype, as shown in the top right of this infographic >>3257929

You may argue that it's impractical or a poor idea, but he has the money and the technical knowledge and he's determined to make it happen. I should know, I'm one of the participants in the 2012 test run of the shallow water habitat which will prove the viability of the systems to be used later aboard the permanent civilian colony.

This is a real thing that is happening, as confounding as you may find it.

I came.

>>3257962

How so? They have a well known political bias but this particular story isn't political and can be independently confirmed elsewhere. The fact that Fox also reported it does not harm its credibility.

I chose the Fox article because it had the helpful infographic showing the habitat designs and the specifics of the 2012 and 2015 missions.

A profoundly idiotic idea of people who have read too much Jules Verne.
Just the constant fear that one of the glass panels could start leaking or even break would keep most people from living under water.
Also how the fuck do you bring in your groceries?
And what about your shit?

>>3257946
>We're never going to live in the water. Seaquest was a shitty greenpeace star trek clone that had zero good ideas.

We're definitely going to mine in the water, though.

>>3257992

>>A profoundly idiotic idea of people who have read too much Jules Verne.

I'm not sure what I've said to you that warrants this insult.

>>Just the constant fear that one of the glass panels could start leaking or even break would keep most people from living under water.

But there are enough who don't fear it to fill out at least a few civilian colonies. Also, the smaller trailerable 2 man modules (which will be mass produced and sold to diving enthusiasts as an additional revenue source) are ambient pressure, meaning a hull puncture would not permit air to enter. The slight overpressure would simply cause it to bubble out.

>>Also how the fuck do you bring in your groceries?

By boat. There are two tourist submarines converted into aqua elevators of a sort using a winch system. Pic related. The boats run twice daily, so people can work on shore as well as shop.

>>And what about your shit?

Fish eat it. Although some will be kept as aquaculture fertilizer.

>>3257984
>>3257972

There will always be rich and eccentric people who will live in weird places and say it's the way of the future. People live in trees, in caves, in houses made of cow shit, in abandoned missile silos.

All of them have good reasons, but are ultimately impractical. You're advocating people just go out and build cities out in the middle of the ocean. Why? Nobody likes the idea of being in a cramped tin can with limited air and supplies. Unless you make an entire city, the commute is going to take forever

It's just a silly dream. It's not practical in any sense and it will never catch on. It's simply too expensive.

It's just a toy for rich people to play pretend atlantis.

>>3257993

With ROV's. You're not suggesting that we use people to mine the floor of the ocean are you?

>>3258013

One Question:

How do these underwater colonies cover their stupendous operating costs?

No magic, no guesswork, no bill gates giving you a loan. Real dollars and cents, how would an underwater colony make enough money to support it's initial construction and operating costs and pay the workers? No future tech. Now.

>>3258015
True just like people living in space.

>>3258030

Exactly as true. It's never going to happen. The whole spaceship one ride is just entertainment for the rich people. And oh sure it'll come down in cost, because as we know energy costs have just been coming down over the decades.

Inb4 "but airlines got cheaper over time!"

That's because airlines took people to places they'd want to go.

>>3258015

>>All of them have good reasons, but are ultimately impractical.

For everyone, yes. But I'm not claiming this is for everyone. It will be for a particular niche.

>>You're advocating people just go out and build cities out in the middle of the ocean.

No, I am not. That would be unwise. First of all, the abyssal plain is 2.5 miles deep. The pressure is too great to build large habitats using existing materials. Moreover, at that depth it's extremely dark and the landscape is barren. Nobody would want to live there.

Civilian colonies will be on the Continental shelf well within the photic zone where ample light reaches the colony and coral reefs and the associated fish species are plentiful. This particular colony will be in the Gulf stream so as to take advantage of the constant flow to drive a tidal turbine, which will offer reliable uninterrupted power without pollution.

>>Why? Nobody likes the idea of being in a cramped tin can with limited air and supplies. Unless you make an entire city, the commute is going to take forever

You're assuming again that it will be in the middle of the ocean. It won't be. It's planned for just a few miles offshore.

You describe it as living in a tin can. Is your home a tin can? Why couldn't a subsea colony be as nicely furnished and decorated as your home? And easy access to the ocean means you're not confined at all once you get past thinking of the ocean as a hostile, inaccessible place. It is instead a new wilderness to explore and a new frontier to settle.

Pic related: Is it so ugly that nobody will want to live there?

>>3258028

>>How do these underwater colonies cover their stupendous operating costs?

The high operating costs of historical habitats was due to the constant consumption of gasoline by generators and air compressors aboard their life support buoys and support vessels.

The high initial construction cost of historical habitats was due to the fact that the technologies involved (compact dehumidifiers, aircon, scrubbers, etc.) were not yet commoditized. Today you can buy all of this shit at Wal Mart, and build your own undersea habitat, as Lloyd Godson and various dive clubs around the world have. Picture related. He is not a rich man. He's a marine biologist, but was able to build not one but *two* subsea habitats by himself.

The technology is no longer prohibitively expensive and we now have ways to provide power for the compressors and onboard systems without constantly burning gasoline. That obliterates the largest initial and ongoing expenses.

>>No magic, no guesswork, no bill gates giving you a loan. Real dollars and cents, how would an underwater colony make enough money to support it's initial construction and operating costs and pay the workers? No future tech. Now.

Many modules will be set aside as luxury hotel suites and laboratory space for visiting marine scientists. The permanent residents will pay $1097 monthly in rent and utilities, including water/sewage/power/air but not internet which will be on a separate plan.

>>3258040

>You describe it as living in a tin can. Is your home a tin can? Why couldn't a subsea colony be as nicely furnished and decorated as your home?

Because a large steel tube structure that i could fit a mattress through would be so expensive i couldn't afford one day's rent there if i worked for the rest of my life?

Also, there already is an underwater hotel. It costs $30,000 per couple, per week because guess what? It's ludicrously expensive to have luxury on the bottom of the ocean no matter how shallow.

You seem to be coming from a viewpoint in which the concept of money does not exist. This is why it is utterly impractical and why i mock you.

>thread about nuclear anything
what the fuck mad, i request to be informed of these

this is a pretty ballin' design. an all-in-one reactor that's stationed offshore instead of requiring a lot of land for an exclusion zone. i rike it

>>3258076

>The permanent residents will pay $1097 monthly in rent and utilities, including water/sewage/power/air but not internet which will be on a separate plan.

>Yes, i am saying that a large steel underwater facility that needs it's own power source, air source, water source, and food source, as well as an operating crew assuming realistically that every resident is not an engineer, will cost about as much as a low-income apartment.

Confirmed for bat-shit insane.

>If you like nuclear power so much, compare countries with nuclear power and countries without it. The best livable countries are the countries SAFE FROM NUCLEAR

>Saudi Arabia, Libya, Venezuela, Germany > France, Latvia, Japan, UK

>HUUUR DUUUR

Sorry, this is what I get from the anti-nuke kids.

>>3258028

Project Venus.

>>3258082

>>Because a large steel tube structure that i could fit a mattress through would be so expensive i couldn't afford one day's rent there if i worked for the rest of my life?

Residential modules will cost about $100,000-$150,000. Less than most small houses.

>>Also, there already is an underwater hotel. It costs $30,000 per couple, per week because guess what? It's ludicrously expensive to have luxury on the bottom of the ocean no matter how shallow.

You're talking about the Poseidon Undersea Resort. It has not yet been built. There is an undersea lodge that has been in operation since 1986, and it costs $125 for a three hour stay or around $400 overnight. Pic related.

>>You seem to be coming from a viewpoint in which the concept of money does not exist. This is why it is utterly impractical and why i mock you.

Feel free to. I know a great deal more about the history of manned undersea installations, the technology involved, what's being done with them today and what is practical to do given current technological and financial constraints. You're coming at this from a comparatively uneducated point of view.

>>3258120

>open page

>"Beyond politics and war"

ohgodmysides.jpg they really think they're going to make Rapture.

>>3258104

>Yes, i am saying that a large steel underwater facility that needs it's own power source, air source, water source, and food source, as well as an operating crew assuming realistically that every resident is not an engineer, will cost about as much as a low-income apartment.

No, I did not say this. The structure itself will cost several million dollars as well as $100,000 for each additional residential module, sans interior furnishing. The *rent* will be $1097 per month and it is sufficient to gradually pay off the initial construction expenses as the overhead costs are far less than you're assuming, because power is sourced from the gulf stream rather than gasoline hungry generators on an overhead buoy.

>>3255359
says the country with fuck all nuclear power because their all scared
you could only dream of our glorious power stations

>>3257897
>germany
>right next to france
>a country where 80% of the power comes from nuclear
>a country that supplies a lot of germanys power

>>3258083

>>what the fuck mad, i request to be informed of these

Heh. I have no way to get ahold of you.

>>this is a pretty ballin' design. an all-in-one reactor that's stationed offshore instead of requiring a lot of land for an exclusion zone. i rike it

I know, right? Even the hardcore haters have to admit that this is a solid idea. And the construction of any 1atm manned habitat let alone one this large represents progress towards a future where people live and work in the sea.

Simply having these reactors present solves the three biggest issues, air, desalination and power. They can produce air the same way nuclear submarines do, and fresh water as well (via hydrogen and O2 recombination). These two services, plus power, would drastically reduce the overhead expenses for any large subsea community.

And the power compnay benefits as well, since the potential exists to hire locals from the subsea community or relocate employees there, such that they can get engineers and maintinence workers to the reactor in minutes instead of hours.

>Problem with nuclear generator
-potential radiation leak
>no fresh water
>no oxygen
>no escape

>>3258343

>potential radiation leak

Neatly contained by water, one of the most effective radiation shields known to man.

>no fresh water
>no oxygen

All you need to extract both of these from sea water is a power source. A subsea nuclear reactor would have no problem producing ample supplies of fresh water and oxygen.

>no escape

It's a 1atm facility. You can surface directly from it without having to decompress. You were never exposed to ambient ocean pressure, so your tissues never saturated with Nitrogen. It's why increasingly commercial divers are using rigid, 1atm diving exoskeletons. (Pic related)

>>3258417

>Neatly contained by water, one of the most effective radiation shields known to man.

Radiation leaking into the sea is still a problem, albeit less so than radiation leaking into the atmosphere. What's more, radiation leaking into workers living quarters is a serious issue.

>All you need to extract both of these (oxygen, fresh water) from sea water is a power source. A subsea nuclear reactor would have no problem producing ample supplies of fresh water and oxygen.

Please read "Problem with power source."

>It's a 1atm facility. You can surface directly from it without having to decompress. You were never exposed to ambient ocean pressure, so your tissues (are) never saturated with Nitrogen. It's why increasingly commercial divers are using rigid, 1atm diving exoskeletons. (Pic related)

This is great, however it doesn't help the people who have to keep the monetarily and enviornmentally expensive generator from exploding. Are you sure you can surface and get away faster than an exploding nuclear generator will wreck your shit?

>>3258417

>It's a 1atm facility. You can surface directly from it without having to decompress. You were never exposed to ambient ocean pressure, so your tissues never saturated with Nitrogen. It's why increasingly commercial divers are using rigid, 1atm diving exoskeletons. (Pic related)

1) these have been around for decades. I know all about them. The best ones are made in my city (Santa Barbara, CA)

2) they are NOT widely used

even at the sea floor, bottom of the god damn ocean, working on the supports of oil rigs, saturation diving is the absolute norm.

for every hard suit, there are about 50 saturation divers.

3) it is MUCH cheaper to pay a bunch of saturation divers to sit in decompression chambers for weeks-months on end, than to buy and maintain multi hundred thousand dollar hard suits that require entire teams of engineers/mechanics to maintain, as well as frequent replacement.

for every hard suit diver, you can employ about 5 saturation divers.

it is only economical to use these things under very specific sets of circumstances.
this is why they are not SUPER widespread. Theoretically, its a fucking miracle technology that everyone would use if they could.

but it is so god damn expensive that it limits its application, even by multi-billion dollar oil and mining companies.

>>3258477

>>Radiation leaking into the sea is still a problem, albeit less so than radiation leaking into the atmosphere. What's more, radiation leaking into workers living quarters is a serious issue.

Nobody will be living aboard these reactors for longer than a day or two. The bulkheads will be minimal, as they won't typically need to stay for very long.

>>Please read "Problem with power source."

All modern undersea habitats like the Aquarius store at least a week's worth of excess air (Aquarius stores 2.5 weeks worth) in racks of scuba tanks. And a fresh water resevoir performs a similar function for drinking water, such that if there's a power failure neither fresh water nor oxygen will run out for weeks. Even the LED lighting will last at least that long on backup battery power.

>>This is great, however it doesn't help the people who have to keep the monetarily and enviornmentally expensive generator from exploding. Are you sure you can surface and get away faster than an exploding nuclear generator will wreck your shit?

Yes, there were several hours of warning before Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the Fukushima plant melted down. Besides which the most volatile components are in a separate module suspended above the habitat on a cable as seen in the renders. Anything capable of exploding and breaching the pressure vessel that the reactor is in has been built into that separate housing, suspended primarily to insulate it from earthquakes.

>>3258490

>>2) they are NOT widely used

I know, I never claimed otherwise. See:

>>"It's why increasingly commercial divers are using rigid, 1atm diving exoskeletons"

This is true, there has been an increase in the use of rigid 1atm exoskeletons. At the same time they are not yet widespread.

>He thinks there aren't nuclear carrier and nuclear submarines already in world's ocean from multiple nations as we speak?

Oh wow.

OP's pic is basically a Virginia Sub with an outlet.

>>3258509

>>OP's pic is basically a Virginia Sub with an outlet.

Precisely. They'll even be built in the same facilities. We've invested so much in the infrastructure necessary to build subs, it only makes sense to get additional use out of it that benefits civilians.

>Protection against terrorists.

What stops them from dropping a bomb and letting it sink?

>>3258573

>>What stops them from dropping a bomb and letting it sink?

The Navy and coastguard.

>>3258586
This. It'd probably be pretty easy to set up some kind of net/shield 100 or so metres above the reactors with a net, some cylinders full of air, and some steel wire that could intercept mines before they make contact, too.

>>3258573

Jawas cannot into ocean.

>>3258593

>>It'd probably be pretty easy to set up some kind of net/shield 100 or so metres above the reactors with a net

Like the nets shown in the illustration? :3

>>3258600
touche, sir.
I was thinking of something further up though, and possibly with some kind of explosive-reactive properties.

>>3258629

Mite b cool, but you only really need to keep the explosives a certain distance away to render them harmless. We're talking about several inch thick steel hulls, so unless they can get an explosive charge within a few feet of it, they won't be able to cause any real damage.

>>3258658
unless it's a large explosive. I bet Iran has some really big torpedoes

>>3254820

>TEDxYYC - Kirk Sorensen - Thorium
Holy shit, that's awesome!

I fucking love this thread.

>>3254820
lftr would work pretty damn well in this kind of context, mostly because of the small footprint

you could also run it as a steam system to take advantage of the location, but it'l be less efficient

>>3258729

Bingo. Thorium is the future of nuclear power, although I'll take what we can get if it means more reactors in the near term.

>>3259131
indeed. this power plant in a can idea circumvents the core problem with other modular small reactor designs, it doesn't need to be small.

good luck getting it cleared by the NRC in this century though