Alienware no longer shipping high end gaming PCs to certain US States, citing new power consumption regulations

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

well, as i said ten thousands of years is agreed upon by european experts, in europe… 

 

And saying "50 years" is simply disingenuous, misleading and false, the 50 years is simply the time it takes to be half as radioactive and half as deadly, doesnt mean its not still super deadly, like a few days of exposure would surely be enough to kill anyone.

 

Nope, we only have estimates but these need to be contained safely for thousands of years, which is nearly impossible (and a problem, just not for us lol)

 

 

 

 

You completely misunderstand what I'm saying. But you tried quoting the article at 1million+ years as if that estimate is anything other than factually wrong, because it is. The estimate for thousands of years is based on LWR production cycles using U-238, which again is dominated by the transuranic wastes at those timescales.

 

The 50 year stuff is with different fuel cycles, from the large number of fission products that decay extremely rapidly. For example Zr-95 with a halflife of 65 days (having then something like 300 half lives by the time 50 years goes around). The basis of the original numbers I gave was the example of an open fuel cycle (removing actinides beyond Uranium as they are produced) and the time it takes the rest of that waste to reach the radioactivity of natural ore. This is obviously not what is currently done, I separately discussed why open fuel cycles are out of favor.

 

I'm not trying to be particularly rude when I say this, but I can literally show my degrees and qualifications in this field, I am well aware of what a half-life is, how it is measured, and what I am actually talking about. Including having done calculations for safety critical events on what is actually permissible, healthy, and lethal (those three standards being very different).

 

EDIT:

 

But again... if you have lead/cadnium/mercury/beryllium (for examples) waste somewhere, 1 billion years from now it's still lead/etc. It's still toxic and still needs to be dealt with. It will never go away. Ever. Give me radioactive wastes to deal with over chemical every day of the week. Of course, as I've said before, many of these radioactive compounds, particularly heavy metals, are toxic besides just their radiological processes. 

 

Uranium is a great example of this. Oral ingestion is actually more dangerous in terms of damage to kidneys and similar from chemical interactions than it is in terms of radiological effects passing through the body. Inhalation into the lungs is the opposite. 

[CarlBar]

8 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

You completely misunderstand what I'm saying. But you tried quoting the article at 1million+ years as if that estimate is anything other than factually wrong, because it is. The estimate for thousands of years is based on LWR production cycles using U-238, which again is dominated by the transuranic wastes at those timescales.

 

The 50 year stuff is with different fuel cycles, from the large number of fission products that decay extremely rapidly. For example Zr-95 with a halflife of 65 days (having then something like 300 half lives by the time 50 years goes around). The basis of the original numbers I gave was the example of an open fuel cycle (removing actinides beyond Uranium as they are produced) and the time it takes the rest of that waste to reach the radioactivity of natural ore. This is obviously not what is currently done, I separately discussed why open fuel cycles are out of favor.

 

I'm not trying to be particularly rude when I say this, but I can literally show my degrees and qualifications in this field, I am well aware of what a half-life is, how it is measure, and what I am actually talking about. Including having done calculations for safety critical events on what is actually permissible, healthy, and lethal (those three standards being very different).

 

Just to back this up with my own more laymen level understanding:

 

The issues with really long term nuclear wastes that are radioactive enough to be an issue is things like spent fuel rods. You've often got a significant amount of reactor grade fuel left in the fuel rods, that stuff by design is highly radiactive. if the fuel rod gets reprocessed that gets pulled out and leaves only the byproducts of fission which are generally far lower half life, (and the higher half life stuff can be knocked down by putting it in special burn up rods in a reactor designed with them in mind).

 

The issue is fuel rod reprocessing is a huge mess because it involves questions of nuclear non-proliferation no one wants to deal with.

[Curufinwe_wins]

11 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Just to back this up with my own more laymen level understanding:

 

The issues with really long term nuclear wastes that are radioactive enough to be an issue is things like spent fuel rods. You've often got a significant amount of reactor grade fuel left in the fuel rods, that stuff by design is highly radiactive. if the fuel rod gets reprocessed that gets pulled out and leaves only the byproducts of fission which are generally far lower half life, (and the higher half life stuff can be knocked down by putting it in special burn up rods in a reactor designed with them in mind).

 

The issue is fuel rod reprocessing is a huge mess because it involves questions of nuclear non-proliferation no one wants to deal with.

To a certain extent. Another issue is that honestly it's just cheaper to buy new ore than to go through the effort of separating old stuff (if you are not doing it as part of a continuous process ala open fuel cycle reactors plan to).

 

When I mention other fuel systems being much more effective at reducing transuranic wastes (aka elements to the right of Uranium on a periodic table), the main reason that is true is because our current commercial fleet runs on low enriched U-235 (pay attention to the number). This means that most of the uranium we insert is U-238 and does not significantly contribute to power generation. Furthermore, because U-238 has so many nucleons (see the larger number), it more readily converts into elements beyond Uranium (like Plutonium, Americium etc).

 

To use an example of why this is true, lets look at Pu-239.

 

In order to produce Pu-239 from U-238, you just need to capture a single neutron. Done. 

In order to produce Pu-239 from U-235, you need to capture 3 successive neutrons AND avoid fissioning into smaller atoms (much more challenging).

In order to produce Pu-239 from U-233, you need to capture 6! successive neutrons and avoid fissioning as both U-233 or U-235.

 

This is a somewhat contrived example, but it does demonstrate why a Th-232/U-233 cycle by itself can reduce transuranic actinide wastes by a factor of ~10000.

 

[Guest]

20 hours ago, MageTank said:

EVGA 220-GA-0650-RX (I think this might be made by Andyson?)

EVGA 210-GQ-0750-RX (No idea who makes the GQ series, doesn't look like Superflower like my older supernova)

High Power HP1-J700GD-F12S (No idea who the OEM is on this one either, if I had to guess based on aesthetics alone, I'd say maybe Sirfa?)

Thermaltake ToughPower GF1 ( I believe this would be our CWT unit, though I have no idea what LLC controller is in it).

Yeah.  None of these are good for low load efficiency.  LOL!

 

There is a CWT and Highpower OEM (branded as CWT and High Power) PSU that will work.  They're the same ones that iBuyPower and CyberPowerPC use in their builds.  I just don't recall the models off the top of my head.  And then, of course, there's the Corsair RM and RMx.  Those have burst mode controllers as well.

 

EDIT:  @MageTank I forgot the Cooler Master MWE Gold V2 as well.  That has burst mode.

 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

This is obviously not what is currently done, I separately discussed why open fuel cycles are out of favor.

while that is certainly interesting, i dont understand the relevance when we arent using those fuels with a shorter half life?

Also I did not expect anyone to get hung up on the 1 million years tbh, the expected numbers are bolded at the end, 1000s of years, thats a very long time, these containers wont survive Id wager.

 

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

I can literally show my degrees

Then you should know that nuclear waste from nuclear power plants is much longer radioactive dangerous than 50 years, its thousands of years - that is literally  the problem and what i pointed out in the initial post. If it was only 50 years, there wouldnt  even be a problem , containing radioactive waste for ~50 years poses no issue, its long term where there are issues.

PS: I dont see these metals as waste, once theyre not radioactive in deadly / unhealthy doses anymore theyre actually useful again and can probably be recycled (and yes, i know some are naturally radioactive , of course) 

 

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

The issue is fuel rod reprocessing is a huge mess because it involves questions of nuclear non-proliferation no one wants to deal with

The issue is that theres a gazillion tonnes of this stuff already and we dont know where to put it…  That may be different in America (good for them honestly) but for example in Germany they're using "salt mines" and theyre partly flooded already threaten to dissolve the containers much faster than expected - I think they removed them from there again, only to find another  salt mine with similar  issues (afaik)… point is they do not know where to put all the waste, a disaster.

But its cheap and green i guess (yeah it would be if they had planned ahead, which they did not)

 

 

On a side note 2 years ago at the mediteranian sea, I found a huge yellow barell with a "radioactive" sign in about 5-10m deep water… it looked kinda newish not rusty, etc, but i obviously wondered whats up with that, maybe a submarine "lost" it or what? Tho I didnt call the cops, honestly its in a village, the local guys ought to know how to deal with this, i did make pics tho (cant see much as its under water) just because of how incredible this whole thing was, and definitely spooky, and I also dont believe a thin metal shielding helps much against the radiation… 

 

 

 

 

 

[poochyena]

2 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

This is the "use less straws" argument for gaming. Instead of going for the actual polluters and consumers they would rather go after the commoner who barely puts an impact on the infrastructure. 

oh, you mean go after giant billion dollar companies such as... idk.. Dell? If only states would put restrictions on them, huh?

[CarlBar]

23 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

The issue is that theres a gazillion tonnes of this stuff already and we dont know where to put it…  That may be different in America (good for them honestly) but for example in Germany they're using "salt mines" and theyre partly flooded already threaten to dissolve the containers much faster than expected - I think they removed them from there again, only to find another  salt mine with similar  issues (afaik)… point is they do not know where to put all the waste, a disaster.

But its cheap and green i guess (yeah it would be if they had planned ahead, which they did not)

 

 

On a side note 2 years ago at the mediteranian sea, I found a huge yellow barell with a "radioactive" sign in about 5-10m deep water… it looked kinda newish not rusty, etc, but i obviously wondered whats up with that, maybe a submarine "lost" it or what? Tho I didnt call the cops, honestly its in a village, the local guys ought to know how to deal with this, i did make pics tho (cant see much as its under water) just because of how incredible this whole thing was, and definitely spooky, and I also dont believe a thin metal shielding helps much against the radiation… 

 

I'm from the UK. And again it's mainly a matter of reprocessing. it's not hard from a technical perspective to deal with the long duration stuff and knock it down to short duration stuff thats gone in decades instead of millennia or more. But it is both expensive and a political minefield. So rather than dal with it they preffer to try and bury it.

 

Hell if you do want to just up and dispose of it, wait a few years till Space X's Starship is up and running and start shooting the stuff into the sun, problem solved. Money and politics is the only actual issue here.

[poochyena]

58 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

wait a few years till Space X's Starship is up and running and start shooting the stuff into the sun, problem solved. Money and politics is the only actual issue here.

money, politics, and the fact that if a rocket with nuclear waste explodes soon after launch it would destroy most, if not all, life on earth.

[CarlBar]

21 minutes ago, poochyena said:

money, politics, and the fact that if a rocket with nuclear waste explodes soon after launch it would destroy most, if not all, life on earth.

 

You;d need far more nuclear waste on board than even starship is able to carry and you''d have to be moving it in an utterly negligent way for it to get dispersed. Remember when Columbia blew up they eventually determined that the cabin section and the crew in it survived the explosion itself, just not the fall back down. Building a containment vessel that won't blow up with the rocket isn't especially hard. In fact i suspect many current designs could do it, handling the uncontrolled landing is probably a bit much to ask, but there's numerous ways to set that up to be a manageable situation and absolute worst case you've got a concentrated radiation hazard spread over at best a few hundred square metere's, a pain to clean up but not remotely unmanageable.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

1. while that is certainly interesting, i dont understand the relevance when we arent using those fuels with a shorter half life?

Also I did not expect anyone to get hung up on the 1 million years tbh, the expected numbers are bolded at the end, 1000s of years, thats a very long time, these containers wont survive Id wager.

 

2. Then you should know that nuclear waste from nuclear power plants is much longer radioactive dangerous than 50 years, its thousands of years - that is literally  the problem and what i pointed out in the initial post. If it was only 50 years, there wouldnt  even be a problem , containing radioactive waste for ~50 years poses no issue, its long term where there are issues.

3. PS: I dont see these metals as waste, once theyre not radioactive in deadly / unhealthy doses anymore theyre actually useful again and can probably be recycled (and yes, i know some are naturally radioactive , of course) 

 

4. The issue is that theres a gazillion tonnes of this stuff already and we dont know where to put it…  That may be different in America (good for them honestly) but for example in Germany they're using "salt mines" and theyre partly flooded already threaten to dissolve the containers much faster than expected - I think they removed them from there again, only to find another  salt mine with similar  issues (afaik)… point is they do not know where to put all the waste, a disaster.

But its cheap and green i guess (yeah it would be if they had planned ahead, which they did not)

 

 

5. On a side note 2 years ago at the mediteranian sea, I found a huge yellow barell with a "radioactive" sign in about 5-10m deep water… it looked kinda newish not rusty, etc, but i obviously wondered whats up with that, maybe a submarine "lost" it or what? Tho I didnt call the cops, honestly its in a village, the local guys ought to know how to deal with this, i did make pics tho (cant see much as its under water) just because of how incredible this whole thing was, and definitely spooky, and I also dont believe a thin metal shielding helps much against the radiation… 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Okay so lets go through these point by point: (added numbers in yours for reference)

 

1. Honest truth is that history of nuclear power in the west was that military use came first and U-233 cycles are not as easy to make work for weapons etc. Not that current commerical reactors can be used as such, but it provided such a huge inertia that it has taken forever to get over it. Secondly the U-235 cycle is easier to design around for conventional reactors. Of course, conventional reactors were the result of the first point (on sheer inertia), so it is a bit of a chicken and egg thing. Reactors have been built and operated using other cycles but not for a long time (at least in the West) at any reasonable scale. India is investing heavily in basically revitalizing the Shippingport Core 3 version of the Thorium cycle because they don't have much uranium but have tons of thorium.

 

2. Conventional reactors today yes. Though again 1000s vs millions is a huge difference.

 

3. Okay then, tell Flint, Mi to not worry, metals aren't a waste, not unhealthy or deadly. Radiation is not the only way things are dangerous and often not the worst.

 

4. That is hyperbole to the Nth degree. The US generates way more waste than germany does, because it operates the largest fleet in the world by a large margin. For actual numbers, not just 'gazillion tons', there are 400k tons worldwide of spent nuclear fuel. That does not account for the amount that can be recovered from reprocessing or use in a burner reactor, just in general. That 400k tons sounds like a huge number, except scope insensitivity is real. A SINGLE 1GW coal plant goes through 14,000 tonnes a day of material. That means every month, 12 times a year, a single reactor is throwing as much waste into the air as ALL the nuclear power plants have produced in the history of the world. Another example, in 2019 alone, the world generated 5.9 MILLION tons of electronics waste (and lets just say CFLs and similar are explicitly prohibited for going in landfills for a reason). That is 15 times the waste all the nuclear power plants have produced, ever. The world consumed 132 million million cubic feet of natural gas in 2017. that is 3.3 BILLION tonnes of natural gas a year. 

Quote

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2016 estimated there was about 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste in the world at the end of that year. IRENA projected that this amount could reach 78 million metric tonnes by 2050.

(IRENA is a very heavily pro-renewable organization, which is all good, just noting this isn't some hater claiming numbers. These are people from the community looking at and knowing there is a huge growing problem). Still think 400k tons for 60 years of production worldwide is a huge amount?

 

https://theconversation.com/global-electronic-waste-up-21-in-five-years-and-recycling-isnt-keeping-up-141997#:~:text=We believe in the free flow of information&text=In 2019 alone%2C the world,weight to 350 cruise ships.

 

 

 

5. The levels of material activity required to be labeled radioactive is pretty small. and depending on the type of waste, that metal canister could either be more than enough (radiation from tritium for example is trivially stopped by a piece of paper) or basically useless (if it was a gamma emitter). Either way though, 5m of water is more than enough to shield you from any possible harm from even things that would kill you if you touched them bare. You can swim on the top layer of a spent fuel pool with 0 health risks, just don't dive down to the bottom. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

52 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

You;d need far more nuclear waste on board than even starship is able to carry and you''d have to be moving it in an utterly negligent way for it to get dispersed. Remember when Columbia blew up they eventually determined that the cabin section and the crew in it survived the explosion itself, just not the fall back down. Building a containment vessel that won't blow up with the rocket isn't especially hard. In fact i suspect many current designs could do it, handling the uncontrolled landing is probably a bit much to ask, but there's numerous ways to set that up to be a manageable situation and absolute worst case you've got a concentrated radiation hazard spread over at best a few hundred square metere's, a pain to clean up but not remotely unmanageable.

Waste dispersion also is not actually a threat to the world. It has happened before actually.

 

https://apnews.com/article/ee05042362ae448a9b7393fb7fe64df6.

 

Quote

Spain and the United States signed an agreement Monday to further discuss the cleanup and removal of land contaminated with radioactivity after a mid-air collision in 1966 dumped four U.S. hydrogen bombs near the southern Spanish village of Palomares.

Under a statement of intent signed by Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the two countries will negotiate a binding agreement to further restore and clear up the Palomares site and arrange for the disposal of the contaminated soil at an appropriate site in the United States.

In a joint press conference in Madrid, Margallo said the process would begin soon but gave no details.

The bombs were released on Jan. 17, 1966, when a U.S. B-52 bomber and a refueling plane crashed into each other during a routine refueling operation, killing seven of 11 crew members. There were no fatalities on the ground.

None of the bombs exploded, but the plutonium-filled detonators on two went off, strewing 7 pounds (3 kilograms) of highly radioactive plutonium 239 across the landscape around the southeastern town.

 

Note 4 actual nuclear bombs in 1966 were scattered around the landscape, and yet life didn't end everywhere (original report was from 2015). 

 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Okay so lets go through these point by point: (added numbers in yours for reference)

Well, thanks for the informative post, but again i dont really know how its relevant, when i only pointed out this is wrong and misleading… at least in this context:

Quote

Radioactive wastes are stored so as to avoid any chance of radiation exposure to people, or any pollution. The radioactivity of the wastes decays with time, providing a strong incentive to store high-level waste for about 50 years before disposal.

This is the exact quote i was answering to… "50 years before disposal" (well or in some cases no time at all apparently as seen by my encounter in the mediteranian sea) *

 

 

When this would be the correct information:

Quote

Transuranic wastes, sometimes called TRU, account for most of the radioactive hazard remaining in high-level waste after 1,000 years. 

 

And again, the bad part isnt the technical ways of "production", its "long term storage" and "disposal" which is a huge issue worldwide, for I think obvious  reasons (proper storage would be "too expensive" hence they throw it into inadequate "salt mines" or who knows where, out of sight out of mind basically)

^i actually  saw the salt mine thing on german TV, absolutely hilarious and reckless behaviour…

 

 

The only thing you can really argue is i didnt find the best link at first… admittedly.

 

 

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Either way though, 5m of water is more than enough to shield you from any possible harm from even things that would kill you if you touched them bare. You can swim on the top layer of a spent fuel pool with 0 health risks, just don't dive down to the bottom. 

yeah, thats what i figured… it was still scarry and i couldnt stop thinking how many of those are actually floating around in the oceans…

They arent gonna last long, salt water is very aggressive to metals, etc… 

 

*actually if you click the link of the quote its not that misleading anymore, the quote itself remains highly problematic imho.

 

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-waste/storage-and-disposal-of-radioactive-waste.aspx

 

They actually explain this, and they actually *did* throw in the sea, including mediteranian, madness lol! Oof.

 

And yes, it does sound like some countries have this down, while others are struggling…

Spoiler

i still think this container was, ahem, "lost" by a nuclear submarine, it was looking brandnew , although i guess no animals or algae usually found on barrels etc would survive?! 

 

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

You;d need far more nuclear waste on board than even starship is able to carry and you''d have to be moving it in an utterly negligent way for it to get dispersed.

This is actuall under "other ideas" in the link above.

 

But spacex is a joke, i present to you the ATOMIC SPACESHIP! Aka "Project Orion"

 

Super cool movie and concept btw…! Its like science fiction but the guys are serious haha.

 

 

 

 

 

[Dabombinable]

Anything to stop powerlines catching fire...

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

This is actuall under "other ideas" in the link above.

 

But spacex is a joke, i present to you the ATOMIC SPACESHIP! Aka "Project Orion"

 

Super cool movie and concept btw…! Its like science fiction but the guys are serious haha.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again politics and money, (and also until starship/SLS get up and running not a practical payload rocket), You can deal with a launch failure, the thing is doing so if one happens is going to make the allready expensive work of sending it to space even more expensive because you have to budget for the dealing of in your plan.

 

To be clear i'm not suggesting it's the best way of dealing with this stuff, (processing and burnoff in specially designed reactors are), but it's a perfectly doable thing.

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

When this would be the correct information:

Quote

Transuranic wastes, sometimes called TRU, account for most of the radioactive hazard remaining in high-level waste after 1,000 years. 

 

Except again that only applies if you choose to deal with certain types of waste by burying it instead of reprocessing/burning/e.t.c. I'm sure theres a few things that could produce very small amounts of long lasting nearly impossible to knock down waste, (there's an exception to every single rule), but a lot fo that long lasting TRU dosen't have to be left as long lasting TFU, it can be used to further generate power or otherwise dealt with on a timescale that vastly shorter. but it takes time, money and effort. And that means you need the financial and political willpower behind it to make it happen.

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

 

Hell if you do want to just up and dispose of it, wait a few years till Space X's Starship is up and running and start shooting the stuff into the sun, problem solved. Money and politics is the only actual issue here.

 

That is not ever happening. All you need is ONE accident and that nuclear debris screws everyone on the planet for thousands of years. We are still dealing with the consequences of Chernobyl, now imagine that, but for 1000 sq miles in the direction of the wind, or irradiating the entire continent if it gets high enough with the wrong weather before exploding.

 

You want to burn the old fuel in thorium reactors and lower the nuclear proliferation possibility and the half life of the waste products. As soon as you start trying to send it off the planet on the back of a bomb (which is what a rocket is) you're asking for trouble. This is also why we do not have nuclear space craft. https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/nuclear-powered-rockets-get-a-second-look-for-travel-to-mars

 

Pretty much, nuclear space craft will likely only come about by assembling such reactors in space and fueling it from non-radioactive fuel should the ship taking the fuel up explode. Consider the kind of problems we have just with transporting batteries on aircraft. May as well just wait for Fusion engines for space craft.

 

[Blademaster91]

13 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

The media hype is just FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) that big brother is out to get your gaming PCs or prevent you from owning gaming PCs. 

 

Most of the articles don't even go into detail on why this affected Dell specifically, only that it did. And then without doing so they make the statements I quoted earlier.

 

I got more actual information and data from the forum members here who have reviewed the actual CCRs and by PSU-Jesus himself.

 

 

My first reaction to the news on this was oh just California doing California things until I read more into it, and Jayztwocent's video on alienware pc's was also good imo. However I still think this is too heavy handed on the consumer, as large corporations waste much more power than people that want to enjoy a gaming hobby and decide to buy an alienware instead of building a PC. Going after gaming PC's is just easier than getting companies to turn off PC's when they aren't being used. And the articles being put out by some tech sites make it sound as if all gaming PC's are bad instead they should be pointing out that alienware PC's come with junk PSU's.

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Give me radioactive wastes to deal with over chemical every day of the week.

This has to be the most weird statement I've ever agreed with

 

6 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

You can swim on the top layer of a spent fuel pool with 0 health risks, just don't dive down to the bottom. 

Honestly unless it's a ridiculous amount of money I wouldn't even consider doing something like that, no matter how safe. It just screams all kind of wrong to me lol

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

 

That is not ever happening. All you need is ONE accident and that nuclear debris screws everyone on the planet for thousands of years. We are still dealing with the consequences of Chernobyl, now imagine that, but for 1000 sq miles in the direction of the wind, or irradiating the entire continent if it gets high enough with the wrong weather before exploding.

 

 

 

Except again any reasonable design wouldn't do that, you'd instead have a single big container full of nuclear waste falling to earth. Thats a manageable problem. Like i said i don't think it's remotely the best way, (been clear on that all along), am just pointing out where getting to the point where we reasonably could permanently dispose of the stuff if you wanted to go that route.

 

Also many spacecraft have gone up carrying small, (10's of lb's at the upper end), amounts of nuclear material in either radioisotope generators or even full blown nuclear reactors. The Russians even had one fall on Canada.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

Except again any reasonable design wouldn't do that, you'd instead have a single big container full of nuclear waste falling to earth. Thats a manageable problem. Like i said i don't think it's remotely the best way, (been clear on that all along), am just pointing out where getting to the point where we reasonably could permanently dispose of the stuff if you wanted to go that route.

 

Also many spacecraft have gone up carrying small, (10's of lb's at the upper end), amounts of nuclear material in either radioisotope generators or even full blown nuclear reactors. The Russians even had one fall on Canada.

Why space craft such a thing anyway? Just use a "giant space gun". If the only objective is to get something in to space at a specific trajectory then a non-self propulsion ballistic launch is all that would be required.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

 

Except again any reasonable design wouldn't do that, you'd instead have a single big container full of nuclear waste falling to earth. Thats a manageable problem. Like i said i don't think it's remotely the best way, (been clear on that all along), am just pointing out where getting to the point where we reasonably could permanently dispose of the stuff if you wanted to go that route.

 

Also many spacecraft have gone up carrying small, (10's of lb's at the upper end), amounts of nuclear material in either radioisotope generators or even full blown nuclear reactors. The Russians even had one fall on Canada.

Yeah, so while this isn't the best idea ever regardless.... spent fuel containers have some pretty insanely rigorous testing requirements.

 

A missile being launched at a dry cask: 

 

Old 1980s tests of fuel casks

Including you know classic things like rocket locomotives into concrete barriers

 

Shorter version using the same raw video:

 

These days FEA is generally used instead of physical testing, but the standards have only gotten tougher than what was expected in those videos.

 

After 9/11 every single reactor containment has to demonstrate (as a specific regulation) survival from the impact of a fuel loaded large haul airplane, including from any fire thereafter. So a 500 tonne aircraft traveling just under the speed of sound etc. These things are tanks, some of the best built things human kind has created. Overdesigned and overengineered to the max.

[Mister Woof]

Here's a more honest article on the subject

 

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/325225-new-pc-power-rules-only-apply-to-idle-as-alienware-squawks-alone

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Why space craft such a thing anyway? Just use a "giant space gun". If the only objective is to get something in to space at a specific trajectory then a non-self propulsion ballistic launch is all that would be required.

Can this even be realistically done? I mean can a "bullet" reach escape velocity?

I suppose - yes , but i would also guess the initial speed would be a bit much, even for the gun , and also the lets call it "payload bullet"…

 

 

 

 

 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Can this even be realistically done? I mean can a "bullet" reach escape velocity?

I suppose - yes , but i would also guess the initial speed would be a bit much, even for the gun , and also the lets call it "payload bullet"…

Not a problem at all, not even just theory as it can be done right now. We just don't have a use case for it. Long barrel rail guns. If we are talking about very dense and heavy radioactive materials and the containment vessel then firing that is not even slightly an issue.

 

It's just that firing waste in to space is fundamentally a dumb idea so we don't do it.

[Mister Woof]

What happens if there's a failure and you have radioactive materials exposed to the atmosphere