News Each Bitcoin transaction consumes 4,200 gallons of water — enough to fill a swimming pool — and could potentially cause freshwater shortages

[Bluoper]

Ehh... that's a lot of anger at something that is completely irrelevant to the statement. Fusion is not stealing from Fission... two completely different things.

My problem is not just funding but public images, fusion is misleading, also the amount of investment that goes into fusion %100 could go into fission instead, it isn't all government funding. And "completely different" is pretty absurd for 2 things that both try to generate power using nuclear radiation. Also I was mainly refuting your claim that we are close to fusion power and the implication that it's a new technology. We are probably about 20 years away from profitable nuclear fusion technology, after that happens its another 25-40 years for proper certification and then another 15-20 to biuld the reactors, all of that is extremely expensive and that money could go to proven gen 4 technology to combat climate change.

 

[palladin9479]

That's ... irrational. Fission has 0 issues with funding, Fusion can't possibly steal from it. The NRC's regulatory nightmare is what is preventing adoption of Fission. Or in other words, you can throw 10,000,000,000,000 at fission, and nothing would change.

 

[Bluoper]

That's ... irrational. Fission has 0 issues with funding, Fusion can't possibly steal from it. The NRC's regulatory nightmare is what is preventing adoption of Fission. Or in other words, you can throw 10,000,000,000,000 at fission, and nothing would change.

There are companies actively building gen 4 reactors, how bout some of the 1.7 billion invested in helion goes to those company's instead? With more funding more small scale and test reactors could be built, that's what the NRC wants to see, more testing. Also if fission won't be here for a while because of the NRC neither will fusion, they both need certification from the NRC so whoever is further along in that process will be here sooner. We are not close to fusion, all of the money thrown at it won't benefit humanity for a very long time. The money would be better spent on something else. It isnt like fission needs x amount per year in funding and is covered the more funding it gets the more designs and reactors are made. Also both fission and fusion get their money from the DOE, that check is %100 being split some how and someone is getting less funding because of that. Edit: (yes I know the DOE dosnt fund all fission and fusion reaserch on the planet. It's just a good example.)

 

[palladin9479]

There are companies actively building gen 4 reactors, how bout some of the 1.7 billion invested in helion goes to those company's instead? With more funding more small scale and test reactors could be built, that's what the NRC wants to see, more testing.

Your not getting the point. You can give 10,000,000,000 USD to those companies and nothing would change. The NRC will not approve the operation of any new reactor designs in the USA. You can build all the demo reactors you want, nothing will be license for commercial operation unless it's an older already approved design. You can't get a new design licensed until after it's been licensed for twenty years. At best we have the Westinghouse AP1000 which while billed as "Gen III+" is just one of the older approved Gen II PWR designs that's been modified with newer features. It took over a decade but the NRC eventually relented and approved the modifications.

If you want to see Gen IV your going to have to look at places like China or possibly France. Everyone is willing to take the money to research demos, but the NRC will never license one to be operated commercially. And you don't drop billions of USD to build one without a reasonable expectation that the NRC is going to license you to operate.

 

[Bluoper]

Your not getting the point. You can give 10,000,000,000 USD to those companies and nothing would change. The NRC will not approve the operation of any new reactor designs in the USA. You can build all the demo reactors you want, nothing will be license for commercial operation unless it's an older already approved design. You can't get a new design licensed until after it's been licensed for twenty years. At best we have the Westinghouse AP1000 which while billed as "Gen III+" is just one of the older approved Gen II PWR designs that's been modified with newer features. It took over a decade but the NRC eventually relented and approved the modifications.

If you want to see Gen IV your going to have to look at places like China or possibly France. Everyone is willing to take the money to research demos, but the NRC will never license one to be operated commercially. And you don't drop billions of USD to build one without a reasonable expectation that the NRC is going to license you to operate.

With your logic of the NRC fusion isn't going anywhere either so it's just a waste of funding. Also if you gave HALF of the US gdp to anything I think it would probably get past with brute force. Edit: (helions current reactor is literally incapable of generating power, it isn't even a contender for the NRC, the 1.7 billion was just for more testing.)

 

[palladin9479]

With your logic of the NRC fusion isn't going anywhere either so it's just a waste of funding. Also if you gave HALF of the US gdp to anything I think it would probably get past with brute force. Edit: (helions current reactor is literally incapable of generating power, it isn't even a contender for the NRC, the 1.7 billion was just for more testing.)

The NRC doesn't license commercial fusion reactor designs. Though I suspect there will be some sort of law passed authorizing them as such the moment one becomes viable. The other way around the NRC is through a small reactor, since the Navy has a carve out exception to the insane catch-22 licensing restrictions.

Again your like the caged bird from Dr. Skinners behavioral experiments. Attacking the other caged bird because the lever doesn't give you food anymore.

 

[Bluoper]

The NRC doesn't license commercial fusion reactor designs. Though I suspect there will be some sort of law passed authorizing them as such the moment one becomes viable. The other way around the NRC is through a small reactor, since the Navy has a carve out exception to the insane catch-22 licensing restrictions.

Again your like the caged bird from Dr. Skinners behavioral experiments. Attacking the other caged bird because the lever doesn't give you food anymore.

When you have 2 caged birds and 1 gets inornamently more food than the other and people love the bird that gets all of the food even though the starving bird can actively feed everyone if it got enough food and strength to break out can you really blame that bird for being pissed about that.(the skinned bird analogy dosnt work for either of us here because this is a very complex issue that your trying to boil down to 1 bad actor, it flat out isnt that simple) Second this applies to countries outside the US like France, they do fund gen 4 but vast amounts of money go into their defective tokamac. The fact that "The NRC don't regulate commercial fusion" is only true because no fusion reactor are commercial, for that to be true they muse 1: be privetly owned and 2: sell electricity created from that reactor. While there are potentially commercial gen 4 reactors that if given 1.7 billion could probably get pretty far through the NRC, but no company will do that because the government needs to invest itself, that shows other companies that the government is willing to play ball.

 

[palladin9479]

When you have 2 caged birds and 1 gets inornamently more food than the other and people love the bird that gets all of the food even though the starving bird can actively feed everyone if it got enough food and strength to break out can you really blame that bird for being pissed about that.(the skinned bird analogy dosnt work for either of us here because this is a very complex issue that your trying to boil down to 1 bad actor, it flat out isnt that simple) Second this applies to countries outside the US like France, they do fund gen 4 but vast amounts of money go into their defective tokamac.

LMFAO...

That's not the skinners bird experiment. Dr. Skinner placed two birds in a cage, one had it's leg tied to the swinging bar the other was free to move around. There was a lever inside, that when pressed would dispense food. The free bird would hit the lever, get reward and so forth, a conditioned response. Then Skinner turned off the food reward, the free bird frantically hit the lever, no food was produced and then proceeded to attack the not-free bird who up to this point wasn't even involved.

It's an example of irrational beliefs caused by perceived theft of value, when no such theft occured.

 

[Bluoper]

LMFAO...

That's not the skinners bird experiment. Dr. Skinner placed two birds in a cage, one had it's leg tied to the swinging bar the other was free to move around. There was a lever inside, that when pressed would dispense food. The free bird would hit the lever, get reward and so forth, a conditioned response. Then Skinner turned off the food reward, the free bird frantically hit the lever, no food was produced and then proceeded to attack the not-free bird who up to this point wasn't even involved.

It's an example of irrational beliefs caused by perceived theft of value, when no such theft occured.

There is a theft of value, while yes this is mostly due to the DOEs budget going down over time fusions funding has been affected by this a lot less than fission. They arnt cutting checks evenly, while yes the checks shouldn't be cut in the first place you can still criticize how the checks are cut and if 1 persons check was cut to a quarter while the other only got cut in half it does seem like that priority is going to one over the other, I think the DOE's priority is in the wrong place. Simple as that. It wasn't until 2020 that the ratio was back to the original pre cut portion and since then fission hasn't had it's funding expanded while fusion has. Your pointing fingers at the NRC I'm pointing at the DOE, pick which beuroctatic nightmare you think is worse. The reason why the bird analog dosnt work is that the 'free bird' in this case isn't independent at all, they are both eating from the same trough the whole time, so if that trough got smaller you can't claim they are separate, they both get funding from the DOE.

Fundamentally the difference in our view points is I think with enough funding a project could get enough momentum to penatrate the NRC, you disagree. You think it isnt possible to go through the NRC.

 

[purpleduggy]

how many megawatts of power and megaliters of water do the servers that generate AI images use? maybe we should not use AI or buy nvidia gpus to run LLMs 😉

 

[purpleduggy]

Why do you think that's not a problem? California went so far as to try and use "shade balls" to reduce natural evaporation:

​

Shade ball - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

​

Evaporates from where you are, to somewhere that you're not. If you're in a water-scarce region, that's a problem.

In regions like the Southwest US, there are huge fights over water, because there's not enough for everyone. Other places, like Portugal, are having historic droughts right now. In a water-scarce or drought-stricken region, it's worth considering all options to reduce water use so there's enough to go around.

​

Severe drought spreads in Portugal, officials seek EU help

Drought spread across almost all of mainland Portugal during an unusually hot and dry April, the meteorology agency IPMA said on Wednesday, and officials have requested aid from Brussels for the struggling farming sector.

www.reuters.com

​

the reason why california has a water shortage is because its a natural desert. its like going to the sahara and saying it has a water shortage. plenty of places on Earth with constant rainfall, with so much rainfall people have to use dehumidifiers just to stop things from molding. don't live in the desert.

 

[purpleduggy]

i just want to let the author and siteowner know i block all ads on this page and only read the archived page so you can't get pagehits. btc 100k here we go XD

 

[palladin9479]

the reason why california has a water shortage is because its a natural desert. its like going to the sahara and saying it has a water shortage. plenty of places on Earth with constant rainfall, with so much rainfall people have to use dehumidifiers just to stop things from molding. don't live in the desert.

Well it does get rainfall in the mountains which creates natural reservoirs. For years people have been asking for another reservoir to be created or more desalination plants to be built to handle the population growth, state and local governments declined to do either with the result being the natural aquafers can not supply enough water for the higher population of the state. The current water shortage was 100% avoidable, they've known this was coming for over twenty years.

 

[helper800]

Well it does get rainfall in the mountains which creates natural reservoirs. For years people have been asking for another reservoir to be created or more desalination plants to be built to handle the population growth, state and local governments declined to do either with the result being the natural aquafers can not supply enough water for the higher population of the state. The current water shortage was 100% avoidable, they've known this was coming for over twenty years.

The real problems is that 80% of the water used in California is for agricultural purposes. What is not sustainable is the growing of crops in California, the 39.4 million people use the remaining water for drinking and so forth, which is easily sustainable.

 

[helper800]

The cooling water in datacenters is non-potable already, along with being mostly closed loop. It doesn't get flushed or consumed.

You are taking what I said out of context. I was giving an example of water consumption outside of what the article is substantively talking about.

 

[Geef]

>Each Bitcoin transaction consumes 4,200 gallons of water — enough to fill a swimming pool — and could potentially cause freshwater shortages

I thought Tomshardware was against doing politics?

Becoming a climate change site isn't cool guys. Stick to what your good at.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

And with that this thread has run its course.

Closing