Re:The Engineer Who Refused to Approve the Challenger Launch
by somenameforme on Friday June 21, 2024 @02:22PM
(#40752257)
There's also the issue of force majeure - war, terrorism, natural disasters, and so on. Increase the number of these and not only can you not really maintain the same level of diligence, but you also increase the odds of them ending up in an unfortunate location or event.
There's also the issue of the uranium. Breeder reactors can help increase efficiency, but they bump up all the complexities/risks greatly. Relatively affordable uranium is a limited resource. We have vast quantities of it in the ocean, but it's not really feasible to extract. It's at something like 3.3 parts per billion by mass. So you'd need to filter a billion kg of ocean water to get 3.3kg of uranium. Outside of cost/complexity, you also run into ecological issues at that scale.
There's also the issue of the uranium. Breeder reactors can help increase efficiency, but they bump up all the complexities/risks greatly. Relatively affordable uranium is a limited resource. We have vast quantities of it in the ocean, but it's not really feasible to extract. It's at something like 3.3 parts per billion by mass. So you'd need to filter a billion kg of ocean water to get 3.3kg of uranium. Outside of cost/complexity, you also run into ecological issues at that scale.