[StillBored]

True uranium is finite in the environment, but its hardly the only fuel source, combined with breeders/etc the fuel supplies are effectively infinite (aka we have thousands of years with just the current known reserves).

Similarly most of the "waste" isn't really waste if we choose to burn it. We have a couple centuries of fuel for our grand children sitting in "waste" caskets at the existing plants. Similarly to how we basically burned the "waste" from the soviet nuke programs in our reactors for 20 years.

So, sail might be cool, but its not going to happen for these huge mega cruise ships. There is a reason the navy uses nukes on their larger ships.

[moffkalast]

And the alternative renewables are pretty bad when considered in practical terms.

Solar which doesn't work half the time, produces an oversupply during summer and doesn't work during winter, requiring extensive and expensive storage setups while providing a laughable output.

Wind turbines which only work in specific places with stable wind speeds, with blades that last 20 years and can't be cost effectively recycled and produce a larger waste storage issue than nuclear. Not to mention the constant loud whine sound that drives people living close to them absolutely nuts.

Geothermal which works only in places with magma near the surface, otherwise you need to drill down so deep that you destabilize the ground and cause towns to start collapsing into themselves.

Hydrogen storage may be practical in some cases, but with 30% round trip efficiency it's probably not worth it when pumped hydro can do up to 85% and you also get what's basically a huge bomb waiting to level the city block.

Sails, or their more efficient version, Flettner rotors, are a good starting point for significant cargo ship fuel reductions but you aren't gonna be powering them by wind alone.

I think what Rolls Royce is doing right now with SMRs is probably the best way forward, depending on how small they can really make them.

[sorenjan]

Where are the breeder reactors in current use? This has been "just around the corner" for decades now, and if it finally materializes I would hope they would be put to better use than power floating resorts.

Nobody needs huge mega cruise ships. Rather than continue to burn fossil fuel or wasting the resources and trust on them by making them nuclear, there's a simpler solution: ban them. You want a ship holiday, there's plenty of sail ships available. You want to lie in the sun, go to movie theaters, pools, restaurants? Go to a hotel. None of these huge companies are paying the external cost of their wastefulness, and it needs to stop, not be enabled by tech pipe dreams.

[StillBored]

In Asia?

I'm not sure I really understand your point. Breeders were victims of the fact that light water reactors were considered dirt cheap to build/fuel/operate (and were until greenpeace/etc got involved) and countries like the USA have very large supplies of uranium (in fact there tours you can take in NM where you wander around in the desert with a geiger counter and pick up hot rocks).

OTOH, if your going to spend 10's of billions building a reactor one might as well go full bore (particularly with modern computer control systems) and just build something that burns the entire fuel load. Breeder's problems are political same as conventional light water.

And the "waste" we have is 95% or so unburned uranium that could be reprocessed and by itself last the US nearly a century. Oh, and all this waste? By mass, its somewhere in the ballpark of a single rail car for carrying coal (course then it would fission and release energy) so its kept spaced apart in small quantities.

The more one learns about nukes the more the current energy environment becomes unbelievable. I mean the US and Russia dumped more radioactive material into the atmosphere, and created huge downwind radioactive plumes that make the civilian accidents a joke in comparison. Chernobyl was nothing compared to some of these tests, and we are still talking about it 3 decades later despite the fact no one has built a commercial reactor like that in 50+ years.

To many people conflated weapons programs with the safest, most abundant and reliable energy source we have humans have ever discovered.