this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
114 points (96.0% liked)

News

23387 readers
2990 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 17 points 8 months ago (3 children)

How would you cool a nuclear power plant on the moon, no water?

[–] Gork@lemm.ee 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Good question. Not all reactors by design need water as coolant. Some use molten salt, others are gas cooled.

These alternate cooling materials would likely still need to be imported though, so it doesn't particularly make it any easier.

My main question is the effect of the lower gravity on cooling the reactor (thermal hydraulic effects). All of our current reactors are designed for 1 g use, not 0.1654 g that's on the moon. Heat mixture rates in fluids would be different, which is important when you're calculating effective heat dissipation.

[–] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just for fun, go check out xkcd's new What If video. They go into heat dissipation of a nuclear reactor in space (not the moon, but still incredibly interesting, informative, and entertaining).

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Maybe only turn it on at night when the surface gets cold and conduct it into the ground or land it in a permanent shadow? The article said they planned to do it fully automated so I am guessing digging of any form is out.

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You don't just turn a nuclear power plant off.

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 5 points 8 months ago

I believe they mean inserting control rods to dampen the reactions to subcritical.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

If sun is an issue, it might be simpler to set up a “beach umbrella”

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

You cool it with liquid thermal transfer and radiators. Here's what a kilopower plant looks like, the big disk is a radiator.