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RE: Jaimie Mantzel, the Original "Adventure Builder" and Mad Scientist Extraordinaire, Has Joined Steemit!
This is very exciting news. I loved the videos you reviewed about his dome. When I showed them to my wife she rolled her eyes and said, "why are there so many of you people on the internet?"
The answer, of course, is that we were always here but we had to invent the internet so that we could find each other.
Haha! Well said. Before that we just hunkered down in castles with our hunchback assistants and worked on our scientific affronts to nature in seclusion. Btw the webcomic Girl Genius has coined a term for us that I really like and want to popularize.
Quoted from Girl Genius:
This is almost too perfect. I build nuclear reactors for submarines as my day job.
Wow, that's really cool. Have you heard of FlexBlue, the French project to build seafloor nuclear reactors near land? I covered it partway through this article. They want to use the same facilities where nuclear subs are built to manufacture stripped down versions with no propulsion, crew quarters, weapons, etc. Just the inner pressure hull, life support and the reactor. Power would then be sent to shore over a long cable.
The idea is it would be surrounded by free coolant, the external water pressure would prevent Fukushima style containment dome explosions in the event of failure, and seawater is excellent at blocking ionizing radiation. The seafloor location is also especially secure against terrorism.
Wow! That post was two years old. You must be one of the very first Steemians.
The FlexBlue idea is very easy to do. The only question is whether or not it is worth it to submerge them in coastal seas or would it be better to put them in the ground. Cable to send power is expensive and expensive to maintain. If you can put a reactor below ground near a city is is much easier to afford.
The US Department of Energy is interested in the concept of a Small Modular Reactor, which is very similar to the FlexBlue idea. The DOE would prefer to make them in the form of rail cars that can be buried underground and will run for 50 years. At that point the reactor is worn out and the fuel is spent, so you just abandon it in place and install a new one.
The only real problem with the idea is the price of natural gas. Right now the gas prices are so low that you can install gas turbines and never have to worry about the n-word. Nuclear is a long term commitment but the investment in infrastructure is driven by short term profit.
Fascinating, I'm glad I followed you. I am slowly building up my collection of like minded clever people on this site. :) Indeed, I am among the first users of this site. You'd think I'd be doing better.
Of course I am biased in favor of FlexBlue's approach because it's one of a vanishingly small number of applications that's profitable enough to warrant the creation and long term emplacement of underwater habitats. There's just not many things you need such structures for that can't be done without them, and that's profitable enough to justify the outlay.
If Flexblue goes forward, their reactor habitats will be the largest stationary manned undersea structures in history.