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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

#31

Post by georgefrowny »

pfdietz wrote: post #24
georgefrowny wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, indeed all are far below the next one (hydro, 1.3, dam failures, I imagine).

And brown coal is sitting pretty at 36+, i.e. ONE THOUSAND times worse than nuclear.

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

#32

Post by RivieraKid »

soco wrote: post #3

With solar and batteries getting cheaper and cheaper, is this still a topic? Or at least for the time being until that "cheaper" gets cheaper enough?

Solar + battery is very land inefficient, that's basically the main argument.

Edit: Per ChatGPT's calculation, nuclear is significantly cheaper than solar + battery in my country (Czech Republic) if we're talking about adding new reactors to existing power plants.

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

#33

Post by actionfromafar »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #25

Donald Trump does a lot of stupid evil stuff to further fossil fuels but getting all the tech nerds excited about even more expensive nuclear power is actually evil genius.

Yes. They are apparently scrubbing the truth but archive.org still has it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250507123042/https://docs.nrel...

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

#34

Post by tcfhgj »

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…

what about other risks such as the risk of large scale contamination of habitable areas?

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

#36

Post by bell-cot »

pfdietz wrote: post #22
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…

Short-term, subduction zones are deep, maximizing the difficulty for malicious actors trying to get their hands on the waste. The subduction itself is more a marketing feature, for folks who oppose putting the waste anywhere on the surface of the Earth.

Longer-term - it's mid-ocean ridges, not subduction zones, where you find all the volatiles and volcanoes. Yes, millions of years in the future, some micro-percentage of the subducted material will re-emerge, hundreds of miles away, via volcanoes. So will vastly more natural radioactivity, whether or not we dispose of nuclear waste in the subduction zone.

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

#37

Post by simonh »

bogzz wrote: post #11
hn_submit wrote: post #5

Although generally safe these reactors aren't totally safe. I'm concerned lax physical security will allow miscreants to blow them up and spread nuclear materials over a wide area. The ensuing panic would totally destroy any goodwill nuclear power has gained over the last 20 years or so. I'm also concerned these things will mostly be used by Big Tech for their A.I. data-centers playing the Good Samaritan with their c…

"Miscreants" conjures in my mind an image of little British boys with dirty feet in Industrial Revolution era attire.

Those cheeky chappies from Vodkaland with their Polonium water and Novichok perfume don't half get up to some jolly old japes!

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

#38

Post by fasterik »

soco wrote: post #3

With solar and batteries getting cheaper and cheaper, is this still a topic? Or at least for the time being until that "cheaper" gets cheaper enough?

The problem with 100% solar+batteries is that you need to massively overbuild for the system to meet demand. It's far more cost-effective to have some portion of generation come from a firm, weather-independent source. The main options are fossil fuels, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Since fossil fuels emit carbon and hydro and geothermal are geographically limited, nuclear is the best option in a lot of places.

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

#39

Post by [deleted] »

testing22321 wrote: post #15
unglaublich wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, gas and oil plants are actively emitting pollutants that kill thousands. And nuclear still is the safest energy sort available.

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

[deleted]

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

#40

Post by bryanlarsen »

arpinum wrote: post #23
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 nucle…

China's nuclear production is only growing in an absolute sense. As a share of production, it's dropping, from a very low level of 4%. China is building other power types far faster than nuclear.
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