Nuclear Economy

[Ahriman238]

So I finally got around to reading the Foundation Omnibus I got for Christmas and one bit stuck in my mind.

During Hober Mallow's era, he is sent to evaluate if the planet Korell has rediscovered nuclear power. His companion remarks that they clearly don't, just from walking down the street, because it would be totally impossible to hide the effects 'nucleonics' would have on everything. Mallow responds that they can't be sure yet, if it were still an experimental or purely military thing.

This got me wondering, I know something of the effects nuclear science has had on medicine and agriculture, and I'm 70% sure my house gets it's zoobs from the Seabrook Nuclear Plant, but are there any obvious signs of this? How much has nuclear energy changed, and is likely to change, or could it change with more funds? What would a society where all energy was nuclear look like?

Or am I overthinking this? I mean, 3 chapters later Mallow shows of a "nuclear shear" that is a perfect cutting, drilling and welding tool, which he claims will cut down a foundry's operating costs by 99%.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There is really no way, for health and safety reasons- both regulation and very actual danger- that the sort of nuclear economy Asimov portrays would ever be allowed, even if it was physically possible.

Between shears, heat projectors and all the other descendants and employers of the proton micropile (invented much earlier in Asimov's future history, before the Spacers' diaspora from Earth), essentially you're looking at major infrastructural and metal- bashing projects, good old fashioned heavy engineering, becoming so much more possible that you could have people building freighters in their driveways. Literally industrial quantities of energy- tens to hundreds of megawatts- available to the common citizen, and tools to use it. Skill becomes the chief limit.

Unfortunately the technology is pure science fiction, as a proton micropile is not a thing that makes physical sense, being basically as good as the advertising said it was; unknown, never-described process, essentially no radiation shorter than infrared, efficiencies high enough that waste heat isn't really a problem, very little maintenance, highly scalable-that society, the society of the Foundation, is physically far too good to be true.

As well as being more than slightly dangerous, if your neighbour manages to screw up and cut your house in half.

That kind of power would certainly affect everything, if it existed. Unfortunately as it is, the bast we could hope for from an all nuclear society would be a society not massively different, power plants feeding a grid and kilowatts available to the ordinary person; with luck maybe people would by than have stopped being so scared of nuclear power that we could actually get some kind of deep space exploration going, that's about it.

[madd0ct0r]

perfect cutting, drilling and welding tool

A bit like CNC laser or water jet cutting?


I'm trying but failing to find a machine tool catalogue. I remember looking at one (nearly a decade ago, when I was a steel-worker) that cut large sheets to size, cut out the parts from the reduced sheet, deburred them (a non-trival process), and then folded them up ready for welding. Car rigs were already using automated welders by this point too.

Compared to the cost for labor FOR THE SAME WORK, we have reduced manufacturing operating costs by 99%. Some of these places have been automated to the point you stack up the steel in the evening and collect it the next morning.

In terms of nuclear industry effect on this - well, they helped drive robotics, and facilitated the high energy laser research. Isotopes are used for weld checking and crack mapping in larger critical pieces (like bridge beams), but I can't think of many direct effects, just lots of indirect ones that were part of the drive to mechanistation.

[Simon_Jester]

To understand this discussion you need to know that in the Foundation-verse was written in 1940 when people had only a dim idea of what atomic power would and would not allow. Thus, Asimov assumed it would have roughly the same impact on society that, say, electricity and the steam engine had. That's why it's supposed to be stupidly obvious just from walking around the streets whether or not the civilization has atomic power- just as it'd be easy to tell if a civilization had electricity or not.

He also posited that nuclear power could be miniaturized into very high energy applications. That water-jet cutter you're talking about, maddoctor, is still an industrial machine tool that takes industrial supplies of power, and a physically large, expensive building to operate in. In the Foundation setting, you have hand tools that can do the equivalent, powered by very tiny atomic power supplies.

In real life this is unlikely to happen- because atomic power doesn't miniaturize that well.

[Ahriman238]

Eh, kinda Madd0ct0r. In the book Mallow takes this little hand tool and, for demonstration purposes, cuts an inch-thick sheet of steel down the middle, boasting the length of the cutting edge can be adjusted in micron increments and he can just as easily slice thicker steel atop a table without scratching the table. Then he uses it to peel off "foil-thin" sheets from one of the halves, drills "perfect" holes with ease, and finishes by cutting the ends off two lengths of pipe and joining them, no weld, no weakness and any irregularities existing purely because he did it by hand.

Yeah, apparently in the Foundation-verse they can build nuclear reactors the size of a walnut, small enough to be worn about the wrist or neck, without apparent risk from radiation, only the annoying need to fill up with fissile material weekly.

[Stark]

Simon's right. Its an artefact of a time where ATOMIC had a meaning beyond the steam turbines it turned; it was a whole perception of the future irrevocably changed by cheap, portable, inexhaustible, flexible and safe atomic power. That we'd just swap coal plants for nuclear plants and continue on as we were was not what they envisaged with this limitless, god-like power to create energy and use it in incomprehensible devices to fundamentally change the way we lived life.

Not very well informed, but what science fiction author is? In the Foundation series it obviously worked that way.

[Simon_Jester]

In Asimov's defense, he was writing before anyone except Manhattan Project scientists knew anything meaningful about nuclear fission or radiation hazards. The story we're referencing was published in mid-1944. So he had more reason than most to be uninformed- he'd have had to be reading classified US government notes to even have more than a vague clue what he was talking about.

Plus, that whole "limitless, god-like power to create energy and use it in incomprehensible devices to fundamentally change the way we lived life" had already happened once within the living memory of pretty much any middle-aged man in Asimov's society. Even basic stuff like flashlights and electrical appliances was new technology in the 1900-1940 timeframe, and it had changed everything from industry to domestic living. The idea that atomic power would do the same thing all over again was pure analogical reasoning.

Not really any worse, from a certain point of view, than us today assuming Moore's Law will continue until 2030 or 2040 or whatever.

[Starglider]

Not really any worse, from a certain point of view, than us today assuming Moore's Law will continue until 2030 or 2040 or whatever.

Assuming a second quantum leap will occur, based on new and largely unknown principles, is quite different from assuming a well-established trend will continue based on refined implementation of fairly well-understood principles.

[Zixinus]

A question: say, you are a TNG Enterprise-like ship (in goals, rather than technology) traveling the galaxy. You come across a life-carrying world that apparently has sentient life. Lacking magic sensors, your scientists determine this by having powerful telescopes spotting things like agricultural fields, buildings and roads (and the vehicles they use). You can tell that they are not natural because they are radically different from the areas where these things are lacking.

How can you determine if this society has nuclear power?

Would you have to land? If you could not land, would some long-term satellites be needed? Could you tell only if nuclear weapons are used? What about taking atmospheric samples (but not actually landing)?

[Simon_Jester]

Not really any worse, from a certain point of view, than us today assuming Moore's Law will continue until 2030 or 2040 or whatever.

Assuming a second quantum leap will occur, based on new and largely unknown principles, is quite different from assuming a well-established trend will continue based on refined implementation of fairly well-understood principles.

All right, at the cost of being lengthier, I will make explicit something I had intended to be implicit.

There is some practical barrier we are not going to beat in miniaturizing an integrated circuit, not using straightforward scaling of existing technology. Sooner or later the electrons start quantum-tunneling across the gaps between the electrical components, or something else goes wrong, and you have to stop miniaturizing. The main reason I used "or whatever" in my post was that I did not have the inclination to look up estimated dates for when that point comes. And what I had intended to talk about was the idea that instead of stopping there, progress in electronics would continue, say because we would by then easily be able to graduate to 3D printed circuits or some other, rather different, technology.

Also note that in Asimov's time, technological progress as a direct consequence of more powerful tools for manipulating matter and energy (as opposed to information) had been the norm continuously since roughly 1800, with essentially no pauses such as we've run into today.* As an empirical estimate, assuming that mastering a whole new class of fundamental forces would allow this progress to continue... it is not deductively sound, obviously not, but as an inference it is forgivable.
_________________

*Right now, it seems like the main force impacting technological development comes from advances in information technology, not so much materials and certainly not power generation capacity.

A question: say, you are a TNG Enterprise-like ship (in goals, rather than technology) traveling the galaxy. You come across a life-carrying world that apparently has sentient life. Lacking magic sensors, your scientists determine this by having powerful telescopes spotting things like agricultural fields, buildings and roads (and the vehicles they use). You can tell that they are not natural because they are radically different from the areas where these things are lacking.

How can you determine if this society has nuclear power?

Would you have to land? If you could not land, would some long-term satellites be needed? Could you tell only if nuclear weapons are used? What about taking atmospheric samples (but not actually landing)?

Satellites would give you photo reconnaissance. You could, for example, probably identify power stations, and watch to see if any fuel is being carried into the facility; if not, it's probably nuclear. Satellites could also detect a nuclear test, if it happens above ground.

Atmospheric samples would allow you to find some radiation from fallout, again from nuclear tests OR nuclear accidents. But except for some blatant fission byproducts, that only gives you new information if you have some way of establishing a baseline.

Probably the most reliable way is to do something like carbon-14 testing on both new organisms, and organisms that are 100-200 or more years old: see if the amount of radioisotopes being taken up by the biosphere has increased in the past few centuries.

[Zixinus]

So, Simon, without nuclear weapons tests, you say that it is actually rather difficult to tell whether a civilization has nuclear power plants? Especially if you do not want to violate a "prime directive" or similar rule?

Do you have any idea how long will nuclear weapon test fallout remains detectable?

[Simon_Jester]

You could also detect the fallout from a Chernobyl-like event; a civilization that's had nuclear power for long would probably have one. The artificial radioactives from nuclear tests and accidents would probably remain obvious for quite a long time, because they have short half-lives and are therefore extremely rare in nature. Things like carbon-14 occur in nature, in uncertain quantities, so you can't use them for testing- you need to establish a baseline of how much carbon there "should be" before you can point to extra C-14 and say "this must be from artificial radioactivity."

But something like strontium-90, with a half life of a few decades, is a dead giveaway that someone's been doing nuclear fission in the past few centuries. On the other hand, a lot of these isotopes don't stay in the atmosphere, so you'd at the very least need to land your flying saucer and take soil samples or mutilate a cow or something to get the information you're looking for about isotope balance.


If you can carry out prolonged orbital observations, you'll easily be able to watch major power plants and note which ones don't get big trainloads of coal or whatever shipped into them, and don't have smoke/exhaust plumes consistent with, say, burning natural gas. Note that if you're trying to conceal your presence, any atomic-era civilization has enough technology that they will probably figure out if alien probes are orbiting their planet sooner or later.

On short notice... Are there structural features that would make a nuclear power plant obviously different from, say, a geothermal installation of comparable output? Features visible from orbit? I'm going to guess "yes," but I'm not sure how much certainty you could get from them. Especially if you're assessing the architecture and engineering principles of an alien civilization that might have chosen different solutions to certain problems (i.e. reactor cooling towers).

[bilateralrope]

On short notice... Are there structural features that would make a nuclear power plant obviously different from, say, a geothermal installation of comparable output? Features visible from orbit? I'm going to guess "yes," but I'm not sure how much certainty you could get from them. Especially if you're assessing the architecture and engineering principles of an alien civilization that might have chosen different solutions to certain problems (i.e. reactor cooling towers).

The difference might not be in the plant itself, but in the surrounding geography. If you see a power plant of a specific size, but the geography says that there isn't enough geothermal activity in the area for a power plant of that size, then you know that it isn't a geothermal plant.

[Sea Skimmer]

How can you determine if this society has nuclear power?

Easily? Automatically detecting uranium mines from space via photographic analysis, not of the plant equipment (which is slightly but not completely obvious anyway) but the actual reflective spectra of the uranium ore exposed on the ground and in the tailings piles, and also via laser remote sensing is all possible with roughly two decade old technology.

Nuclear power plants would be very easy to identify on infrared photography if you for some reason couldn't blatantly identify them via visual observations. Giant heat producing core + cooling towers + no combustion byproducts really can't be anything else. That's very plausible to automate. Certainly you could automate it enough that a reasonable team of humans could sift through the false alarms in real time. Probably already been done by the US or a commercial company tracking industrial development in the world.

Now, if a nuclear operation was very small scale, like the US in 1945, it might be hard to pick up it up in less then months of observations, indeed all this detecting is dependent on available sensor aperture and processing/analyze power but in the you'd reasonably be able to detect it. In all reality finding a robust nuclear power industry from space with nothing but optical telescopes and the human eye probably wouldn't take that long because of how huge the condensation plumes from the cooling towers can get. If all the planet has is a couple non power reactors at exactly one site that's going to be annoying. But you'd still find it given time.

Depending on some details, the gamma ray emissions of a nuclear reactor might be detected in space too. Sufficiently powerful laser remote sensing could detect them in the atmosphere from space, but I am not sure this technology is workable right now. The laser would need to pass pretty close to the reactor, so its not the best wide area survey tool, but useful for confirming stuff.

Most of these methods would not work well against an elaborately concealed nuclear program in which all aspects are buried underground, including concealing the mining tailings, but in that case a presently theoretically possible but not implemented detection method would still work, which is neutrino detection. Nuclear reactors produce utter hoards of neutrions. This sort of detection has actually been proposed for the IAEA to use to find convert nuclear reactors on earth, as even multiple miles of rock would have no concealing effect what so ever. Problem is an effective detector a the moment would require a supertanker for transport. But then supertankers aren't all that expensive if even a fraction of IAEA backers agreed to fund a couple.

Oh and just as an aside, if we start talking about plausible future sensor technology, most high tension power lines create huge amounts of directional ELF radio waves, so its not impossible that our plausible future E-D might be able to map the trunk power grid of a planet in a matter of hours or days, and from that determine the location of all the major power plants from that out of hand. Then they could start taking pictures of those locations without trying to photo map the entire surface first to find em. I think mass IR photography is more likely though. Its possible to make some pretty silly IIR cameras right now as long as money is no issue. ELF is just handy because cloud cover wont stop it.

[bilateralrope]

Oh and just as an aside, if we start talking about plausible future sensor technology, most high tension power lines create huge amounts of directional ELF radio waves, so its not impossible that our plausible future E-D might be able to map the trunk power grid of a planet in a matter of hours or days, and from that determine the location of all the major power plants from that out of hand. Then they could start taking pictures of those locations without trying to photo map the entire surface first to find em. I think mass IR photography is more likely though. Its possible to make some pretty silly IIR cameras right now as long as money is no issue. ELF is just handy because cloud cover wont stop it.

Would ELF detectors let them know how much electricity is flowing through the power lines ?

If so, comparing the size of the power plant with the amount of electricity should let quickly narrow down the type of any specific plant to the few kinds with a similar ratio between size and output.

Are there any kinds of electricity generation with a similar size:output ratio to nuclear ?

[Sea Skimmer]

Would ELF detectors let them know how much electricity is flowing through the power lines ?

Within very broad limits, yes.

If so, comparing the size of the power plant with the amount of electricity should let quickly narrow down the type of any specific plant to the few kinds with a similar ratio between size and output.

That... really makes no sense as an ID method. Each type of power plants has its own fairly blatant appearance. You can tell them apart at a glance generally. You certainly are not going to mistake any kind of combustion based plant for a nuclear plant if you are analyzing the plant to the point of identifying the specific machinery halls and calculating the size of them. This idea would be very error prone when you realize how non standard power plants are.

Are there any kinds of electricity generation with a similar size:output ratio to nuclear ?

Combined cycle gas turbines or coal plants could perhaps have a similar footprint, but everything else would be completely different. Like the gas turbine plant has a huge intake air filter structure, and a huge smoke stack bolted onto the ends of the turbine hall. A coal or biomass power plant has a huge vertical boiler structure and lots of mechanized equipment for the coal movement. Oil plants have oil storage tanks and plumbing. Geothermal plant has a geothermal well field. Any kind of combustion based plant will also have an exhaust plume remote sensing should be able to identify. The differences in IR photographs would be massive as well.

I really don't see much scope for confusing plant types once you are looking at them unless intentional deception is involved. A 50 MW nuclear reactor carefully built into an oil refinery would be hard to identify without radiation sensing for example. You'd just have to be completely batshit insane to build a reactor with a cracking unit on top of it. But maybe the alien space bats will be this nuts.

[Sky Captain]

If a civilization wanted to hide that they have nuclear power couldn't they place reactors in underwater structures, kinda like a nuclear submarine that is sitting on the ocean floor connected to a grid with cable. A waste heat would dissipate in water making detection from space very difficult. Maybe also extract uranium from seawater to eliminate visible mines.

[bilateralrope]

If a civilization wanted to hide that they have nuclear power couldn't they place reactors in underwater structures, kinda like a nuclear submarine that is sitting on the ocean floor connected to a grid with cable. A waste heat would dissipate in water making detection from space very difficult. Maybe also extract uranium from seawater to eliminate visible mines.

Who would they be hiding it from ?

[madd0ct0r]

well, in the foundation series, you might know the next planet over has nukes and is quite twitchy, so if you want to develop anything it's best not to let them know. certain parallels spring to mind immeadetiatly.

[Sea Skimmer]

If a civilization wanted to hide that they have nuclear power couldn't they place reactors in underwater structures, kinda like a nuclear submarine that is sitting on the ocean floor connected to a grid with cable. A waste heat would dissipate in water making detection from space very difficult. Maybe also extract uranium from seawater to eliminate visible mines.

You'd have to put them very deep underwater to hide the thermal plume from space. This would be absurdly expensive to do to the point that surely some kind of thermal gradient power plant or other ocean power source would make sense. It might easily be cheaper to bury it deep underground too and build a giant network of water filled tunnels for heat dissipation. Though you then have to hide the spoil from the tunnels or disguise it as something else like mining.

Also in both cases, you need to hide the power transmission lines source. If you have a reactor in a mine or a reactor underwater you'll have problems with this. If you colocate the reactor with large sources of heat which are also large consumers of electricity like oil refineries it will all be much easier to conceal. Though you could say, bury a nuclear reactor deep under a city and have all the substations underground too, with the wiring going to direct to buildings. That'd be hard to detect, course an enemy might start to question where power is coming from if you did this extensively.

[madd0ct0r]

it wouldn't be hard to dissapate the heat out. There'd still be a slight plume effect, but no-one would notice if a shallow bay looks warmer on infrared.

[energiewende]

I don't understand why nuclear plants would be especially distinguishable from space by their thermal signature. Nuclear plants do have lower thermal efficiency than modern coal and gas-fired stations but only double digits percent, not multiple times. Total output per unit isn't higher (although it's somewhat more common to place many units close together due to higher NIMBY factor). Cooling towers aren't nuclear exclusive either.

The easiest way to distinguish a nuclear plant from satellite photographs would be lack of constant shipments and a large nearby store of fuel.

[Sea Skimmer]

it wouldn't be hard to dissapate the heat out. There'd still be a slight plume effect, but no-one would notice if a shallow bay looks warmer on infrared.

I don't think three or four gigawatts is ever easy to get rid of, it'd be noticed if they were looking for it they certainly would. Half a degree differences can be spotted from space easily enough. Even near surfaced submarines are sometimes spotted via IR simply from the way they stir up colder water from down below.

I don't understand why nuclear plants would be especially distinguishable from space by their thermal signature. Nuclear plants do have lower thermal efficiency than modern coal and gas-fired stations but only double digits percent, not multiple times. Total output per unit isn't higher (although it's somewhat more common to place many units close together due to higher NIMBY factor). Cooling towers aren't nuclear exclusive either.

Because the plant machinery is entirely different. A nuclear reactor and a nine story tall coal fired boiler are never going to look the same on an IR photo. Even if you build a nine story housing over the top of the nuclear reactor it'd be different.

The easiest way to distinguish a nuclear plant from satellite photographs would be lack of constant shipments and a large nearby store of fuel.

Sure but if were talking deception they might pile up useless coal beside a nuclear plant ect... stuff can be done. I only raise deception so much because if it doesn't matter... then you could just ask the planet if it has split the atom or not anyway,

[madd0ct0r]

hmm. assuming you're talking in fahrenhiet, getting less then half a degree difference for 4gigawatt requires just under 3500 meters cubed of water a second.

That's a lot. Either you have a huge numbers of pipes and dissipators running out to sea, or you take somewhere like San Fran bay and make it uniformly warmer. I wouldn't claim it's foolproof, but between the cities around it and the fact it's a shallow expanse that's easily warmed by the sun, it might appear as a possible area to investigate instead of an obvious pinpoint location.

[Zixinus]

A greater problem than aliens trying to "hide it" (I can imagine them hiding it from themselves, like a nation hiding it from another nation) would be if the aliens use large amount of electricity for different purpose. Say, they use nuclear to smelt and refine ores rather than power home refrigerators and iThings. The aliens may find it that it makes sense for them to focus all aspects of a specific production into one area, weapon production for example. And to save energy (or not bother with AC current for some reason), they put the nuclear power plant facility relatively nearby.

I don't know about thermal readings and whatnot, but then you'd be confused about the sheer material going in and out for the refinery and factories. I suppose that then you are left with analyzing the smokestacks, but then all the nearby factories' smoke would also confuse matters, no?