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Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#191

Post by xorfish »

Already__Taken wrote: post #169
chrisco255 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those losses are on a per 100 mile basis. 2-5% per 100 miles of line (not as the crow flies mind you). Superconductors would make a huge difference if they could build a room temperature superconductor.

Exactly, when people mention losses saved by superconductors they don't mean to improve the current grid. It's to route power from the always sunny side of the planet.

HVDC is already below 3% per 1'000km. So connecting Europe to the Sahara is around 5% with current technology

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#192

Post by Firadeoclus »

luspr wrote: post #35
grabbalacious wrote: post #15

>Environmentalists are divided over nuclear power, with some maintaining it is dangerous and expensive, while others say that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 all technologies are needed. Yes, a mix of technologies. But there's more to it than that. We're going to need increasing amounts of power in the future to explore the solar system and to solve all kinds of existential problems. Energy usage is not inheren…

Agree completely. It's a fallacy to believe we will require less energy in the long run. We need much more, if we want to advance as a species.

As we expand to space. On Earth there is an effective upper limit to the amount of heat we can release into the atmosphere before we'd cause catastrophic warming even without greenhouse effect.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#193

Post by Retric »

koheripbal wrote: post #122
Retric wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar + batteries averaged over the 24 hour demand curve are cheaper than current generation nuclear power plant operating 24/7/365. The issue is turning off nuclear power plants don’t significantly reduce costs so their competing head to head vs x hours @ 2c/kWh + y hours @ ~20c/kWh. At first glance it seems to slightly favor nuclear when it can operate 24/7, but nuclear power plants have a very long lifecycle 40+ y…

The important flaw in your argument is the use of the word average. A grid cannot make use of average power generation. It needs consistent power generation. ...and storage needed to make that happen is orders of magnitude higher than what's being factored in here.

Batteries inherently allow for peaking power, it’s nuclear that has issues with fluctuations in demand. So, by average I mean how much are you able to use directly vs how much do you need to store in batteries.

To be more clear only using solar with battery backup you can provide 24/7 power that covers demand but at lower costs per kWh than current nuclear numbers operating 24/7 and vastly lower than trying to reach 100% nuclear generation in almost every country.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#194

Post by renaudg »

neuronic wrote: post #153
Reason077 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Nuclear fission plants take at the very least 10 years (!!) to go online from the day construction begins." Yes, but that's what the small modular reactors being proposed by Rolls-Royce, and others, intend to solve. If successful, they would greatly reduce the construction time, risk, and cost of nuclear projects.

It's a great project for the technology alone but isn't the projected time frame too late? Where will we be 10 years from now with renewables? Also, if Rolls-Royce projects 2029 it doesn't mean it's done by 2029 and most certainly not wide scale deployed/operable. So what kind of renewable infrastructure and tech will be deployed 15-20 years from now? That's what you have to compare it with.

> Where will we be 10 years from now with renewables?

If the electricity storage problem doesn't get solved (which is a pretty small "if", since it requires a very uncertain breakthrough in physics) : nowhere.

In 10 years the climate emergency will be even more salient, but one of coal/gas/nuclear/hydro will still be required in the mix.

Countries that can't have hydro for geography reasons, and have shut down nuclear early for political reasons will be a liability to the rest of the world.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#195

Post by pjkundert »

Firadeoclus wrote: post #192
luspr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely. It's a fallacy to believe we will require less energy in the long run. We need much more, if we want to advance as a species.

As we expand to space. On Earth there is an effective upper limit to the amount of heat we can release into the atmosphere before we'd cause catastrophic warming even without greenhouse effect.

That upper limit is probably orders of magnitude higher than we’re currently dissipating. We could blanket every city and town with permanently heated streets, and - as long as we stopped pumping water vapour into the dry upper troposphere - we wouldn’t even notice an increase in temperature.

The big problems are 1) gigatons of soot coming over the north poles, permanently lowering the albedo of the planet and 2) pumping water into the dry upper atmosphere via jet exhaust, creating permanent cloud layers where they didn’t exist.

Solve those two issues, and we’d have a much more interesting debate...

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#196

Post by Nasrudith »

majewsky wrote: post #16
ainiriand wrote: post #4

That sounds like a very bad idea. Although I am confident that the tech has evolved since Chernobyl, terrorism has evolved as well. It just takes a bunch of assholes to destroy a small town. And yes, I think they will be pretty well guarded. But if you have lots of them some of them will have security flaws.

> terrorism has evolved as well I stopped worrying about terrorism when I realized that they could easily take out most of the European power grid with a few well-placed bombs on the central very-high-voltage power lines. Yet for some reason, they don't. If terrorists were really hellbent on killing as many enemy civilians as possible, the world would look very different. What actually seems to be happening is that t…

Really terrorism is like the Spanish Flu - while not good it is the knee-jerk excessive reaction that is the true threat.

I suspect it is a matter of ideology and psychology. Just emptying an AR-15 clip into substations throughout a country isn't "exciting" or "sexy" even if it would be very effective saboage. It is boring and doesn't validate their ego or whatever statement they want to make. It would be petty vandalism and not even inspiring to those already radicalized to their cause. Plus while causing damage and disruption it isn't exactly terrifying - the aftermath involves selling bonds and overtime for repair and manufacturing. Even if it kills it is far less traumatic than direct violence.

Atomwaffen are essentially the only group I know of who would actually have something like that as a goal instead of a potential method. They are essentially an example of the theory of fascism as a death cult insanely trying to control their own mortality it by inflicting death upon the other. Thankfully they are fundamentally incompetent losers.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#197

Post by The_Double »

hannob wrote: post #48
chrisco255 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and nuclear is the only near-infinite source of energy.

I'm always baffled by such statements. Can you explain in which way solar is not a "near-infinite source of energy"? I mean... there are without doubt technical challenges and all that (but arguably less technical challenges than to do the same with nuclear), but there really is no relevant limit to the deployment of solar cells if you include things like large-scale installations in the desert.

Not every country has access to a desert to deploy large scale solar. Most of the EU, Russia for instance, and those places do not want to be dependent on other countries.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#198

Post by consumer451 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #133

What's missing is a $/kwh quote. It's important because renewables are the cheapest option on the market right now and nowhere near done dropping further in price. If the last ten years are any indication, an order of magnitude further drop in prices before the end of the decade is not unreasonable considering mass production of batteries, solar, and wind is still ramping up and considering the enormous amount of R&D…

> What's missing is a $/kwh quote.

And if we are being honest, why not include total cost of ownership in the $/kwh.

As far as I know this is an impossible calculation for any current nuclear reactor technology.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#199

Post by Beltiras »

DrNuke wrote: post #180
Beltiras wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. Thorium doesn't sound to me like an incremental change at all. It sounds like a gamechanger. There is no blast radius. At all. Criticality in that sense is not possible. There's improvement along every measurable criteria of operation. Some of those improvements are not small either. This is all contingent on me not being mistaken in my assumptions. I've only ever seen the argument from the advocate…

> There's nothing wrong with old tech in computer science. You can containerize Fortran batch programs with ease. All old things come back once in a while. Functional programming is now the rave and Common LiSP actually sees use. You got it. May I second that as a nuclear eng for nuclear? Small & Modular is your container... and the novel, distributed grid at transnational level is your framework!?

I don't think that translates well here. There aren't very many new projects being started up using Fortran. There are some. But the vast majority of Fortran is shrinking legacy because we have better solutions to those problems today (R/Python for Fortran).

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#200

Post by [deleted] »

hokkos wrote: post #121
Retric wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar + batteries averaged over the 24 hour demand curve are cheaper than current generation nuclear power plant operating 24/7/365. The issue is turning off nuclear power plants don’t significantly reduce costs so their competing head to head vs x hours @ 2c/kWh + y hours @ ~20c/kWh. At first glance it seems to slightly favor nuclear when it can operate 24/7, but nuclear power plants have a very long lifecycle 40+ y…

In some countries maybe but in a lot of others there are days with almost no sun, batteries are not for seasonal storage.

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