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Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

nature.com

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Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#21

Post by fulafel »

DanTheManPR wrote: post #18

A lot of people are betting serious money that they will cheaper, more flexible, faster to build, and safer. Including me - I'm working in the industry, and I think they might very well be future backbone of energy production. But there's a real possibility when all this shakes out that SMR's only advantage will be their flexibility. And that might be enough. A major issue with gigawatt scale nuclear is that it's fra…

What % of global electricity production is in too small markets? Seems to be working well in EU at least, markets and grids being multinational.

I'd guess many places in Africa could be potential markets that have underdeveloped grids but growing economies and populations. Hence the SMR industry in South Africa since the 90s I guess.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#22

Post by pfdietz »

comrade1234 wrote: post #16

Seems like you'd end up with even more waste in the end. For example, the navy's nuclear reactor graveyard: https://interestingengineering.com/military/trench-94-the-ee... You could probably just sink it all in the ocean near a subduction zone.

I wish this subduction zone idea would just die. It's dumb. Things move so slowly it wouldn't help, and subduction zones have large amounts of volatiles coming back up via mud volcanoes and, later, actual molten rock volcanoes.

If you want to dispose of waste deep in the sea floor do it far away from subduction zones. Or just store it cheaply in dry casks and minimize the net present value of the cost of dealing with the waste.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#23

Post by arpinum »

hwillis wrote: post #14

And a contrasting article from IEEE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... > Samuel B. Morris, the general manager and chief engineer of Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power, traveled all the way to Geneva in 1955 to attend the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. There, he made a case for small reactors, arguing that because the “number of small units…

SMR is driven by funding, insurance, and regulation. China doesn't have these issues and builds conventional at a great price. China is building 37 reactors, only 4-5 are SMR-type units, and are larger at 600MW. The rest are standard PWR, and the 40+ in planning are dominating by standard PWR.

Regulatory risk is too high, building too infrequent to understand costs, funding for first-of-its-kind is too hard for nuclear in most countries. SMR makes it fundable. New designs give the hope that regulatory burdens can be lowered.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#24

Post by pfdietz »

georgefrowny wrote: post #17
testing22321 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And nuclear still is the safest energy sort available. Surely solar is orders of magnitude safer.

Solar and nuclear are comparable: 0.02 vs 0.03 deaths/TWh ( https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p... ) Depending on what kind of solar, it can have quite a high death/TWh ratio because people fall off roofs while installing them. As a ratio is far better now that so much new solar is ground level solar farms and not installed by amateurs or professionals who have a van, a ladder and watched a Y…

The differences in deaths from (non-accident) nuclear and wind/solar are very small compared to the amount of energy produced. The effect of the statistical value of lives lost is tiny compared to direct differences in energy cost, and so shouldn't have any effect on which is chosen.

This is not the case for coal, where the cost of lives can be substantial.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#26

Post by tastyfreeze »

hwillis wrote: post #14

And a contrasting article from IEEE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... > Samuel B. Morris, the general manager and chief engineer of Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power, traveled all the way to Geneva in 1955 to attend the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. There, he made a case for small reactors, arguing that because the “number of small units…

SMR proposals still use one plot of land. The plant is just built to house multiple reactors.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#27

Post by HPsquared »

hvb2 wrote: post #2

> but SMRs should be cheaper and easier to construct. The word should is doing some real heavy lifting there. Especially given the subject. I guess we'll know in 2030 when one should come online.

We should know by then, at least.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#28

Post by bell-cot »

Nuclear power's biggest problem is that it attracted, even back in the 1940's, a figurative army of techno-utopians - whose pie-in-the-sky promises of electric power too cheap meter, flying cars, and better-than-Santa's-sleigh safety were not quickly and loudly contradicted by people who knew better.

Probably didn't help that many of those keeping quiet had obvious short-term interests in promoting "nuclear everything". Even as various accidents, leaking waste dumps, and regular warnings of deadly communist mushroom clouds made it damned obvious to the general public that they were being systematically lied to.

Sadly, the pro-nuclear camp is still far too influenced by utopian and partisan considerations.

Yes, it'd be nice to see competently-done SMR's in regular use, for the use cases where they make sense. But if I was a policy maker with finite political capital and resources, I'd probably be winding down nuclear power - both to show the public that I wasn't too gullible to trust, and to show advocates for other technologies that lies and delusions would be carry harsh penalties.

Re: Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

#29

Post by DanTheManPR »

ck2 wrote: post #10

there is just one problem like everything else with the current US administration they deregulated nuclear safety * https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5677187/nuclear-safety-... * https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/nx-s1-5920368/nrc-nuclear-rad... any other administration even Republican I'd be willing to listen to why this administration will happily kill thousands or give them cancer if it means another million dolla…

Nuclear regulation could genuinely do with a lot of reforms that would streamline the process without appreciably impacting safety. Everyone would benefit. And that's the huge problem with the administration's breaking of trust and naked corruption: we as a lay people, what should we think if they come out with a bunch of proposals eliminate a bunch of commercial licensing requirement and lowering radiation safety standards? Is that because the old rules are genuinely archaic and not serving their purpose... or because Trump's family and donors are personally financially invested in the very companies mentioned in this article.
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