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Smaller reactors bring nuclear power closer to fulfilling its promise

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

#101

Post by gwbas1c »

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…

There's a political issue. Just look at how hard it's been to protest all the new gas plants that came up over the last ~20 years. The reason is that we built many small gas plants, instead of a handful of large ones. It divided up the protesters to the point where they couldn't work together.

When we built less, but larger, nuclear power plants, they're easier to protest. If we can make SMRs economical, it makes it significantly harder to protest.

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

#102

Post by testing22321 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #51
mayama wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if its cheaper to build small reactor vessels, MANY of the other costs become more expensive in larger numbers. There is no way SMR could beat solar+battery power cost even now. With sodium and other batteries projected to reduce storage cost, it is even more unlikely that SMR could be price competitive in future grids. SMR is the only way that dying western nuclear industry could attempt to deal with ballooni…

To a first approximation, China does not build nuclear power. Nuclear's share of power production in China is 4% and dropping. It seems to me that the main reason China keeps building a relatively tiny amount of nuclear is strategic. Reasons like ensuring they never forget how and ensuring they always have buildable designs so that if something changed they could ramp up the program. And probably even more likely: nu…

They have 36-38 reactors under construction today [1]. I think that’s a bit more than just keeping the wheels turning

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67746

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

#103

Post by dalyons »

UltraSane wrote: post #85
bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> firm That's the opposite of what you want. You want something that is cost-effective to operate at a 10%, 1% or 0.1% duty cycle. Like nat gas or hydro. Not nuclear. And overbuilding isn't the only lever you have to ensure coverage meets your target 99.99% level -- geographic diversity works really well (the wind is always blowing somewhere), and wind power production is usually negatively correlated with solar powe…

You are very wrong. US base load demand is around 400GW that must be provided 24/7

Solar produces incredibly cheap power for the daytime hours, pushing any nuclear off the grid (why would a data center buy expensive nuke power in the hours when cheap renewables are available?). Nuclear needs to be running and selling power at its high price 24/7 for it to be even close to economically viable. Only supplying power that people want(due to its high price) during the night is fatal to nuclear.

base load demand does not mean it has to be met with a constant matched source, and in fact that no longer works economically.

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

#104

Post by fpoling »

teamonkey wrote: post #91
elcritch wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If solar+battery were cheaper wouldn't the new AI data centers be opting to pay to build that rather than nuclear or LPG options?

They are cheaper, that’s why in most of the world, datacentres are being built where there’s copious solar or wind power. The problem is that they need full power 24/365.

Data centers with good load balancing between regions do not need exactly the same power 24/365 so the latest solar-wind-storage is already cheaper in theory. But it would take few years before production of sodium and other batteries will scale up and the mean time a turbine powered by natural gas wins.

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

#105

Post by marcosdumay »

Just worth remembering that the cost/W of steam generators decrease quickly (almost linearly) with size up to ~1GW. What in reverse also means it increases quickly with reduced size, down to the point you can order them 3D printed on the internet (what is around a couple of kW).

And also that steam generators alone have a really hard time competing with solar nowadays.

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

#106

Post by stymaar »

mayama wrote: post #41
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…

> Even if its cheaper to build small reactor vessels, MANY of the other costs become more expensive in larger numbers. There is no way SMR could beat solar+battery power cost even now. With sodium and other batteries projected to reduce storage cost, it is even more unlikely that SMR could be price competitive in future grids. SMR is the only way that dying western nuclear industry could attempt to deal with ballooni…

> there is new geothermal power companies getting funding and are transitioning from pilot projects to production.

If geothermal works economically (outside of volcanic zones where it already does) then it's game over for any other power source except existing dams though because it solves all problems at once.

That'd be a great thing for humanity but I don't think it's worth stopping pursuing alternatives already, because it's still a big "if".

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

#107

Post by arjie »

It's really a pity that we missed the boat on large nuclear reactors. So much more power would enable so many use-cases and cheap electricity would have enabled us to have much less gas heating. Massive damage to the climate caused by misguided regulation. I tried to write to deregulation.gov on reducing the fund allocation required for fission reactor cleanup but c'est la vie. Death by a thousand cuts and then a few big rocks, I suppose. We lost half a century, but so it goes. Now we should be able to do large-scale solar and wind, and if it weren't for the Burning Man people we could have geothermal too, but we'll get there.

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

#108

Post by fpoling »

fasterik wrote: post #38
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.

If solar becomes 2 times cheaper, it will be economical to capture nitrogen from atmosphere and produce ammonia and use that for long-term energy storage and fuel. And with that one does not need massive solar overbuild.

This does not require any magic technology, just scaling up what is available today is enough and will definitely happen within the next 20 years, before small nuclear will have any effect.

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

#109

Post by nradov »

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…

Security costs are also an obstacle. Any nuclear reactor requires 24×7 armed security and that's largely a fixed cost regardless of power output. You need almost as many guards for a small reactor as a large one.

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

#110

Post by will5421 »

stymaar wrote: post #106
mayama wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if its cheaper to build small reactor vessels, MANY of the other costs become more expensive in larger numbers. There is no way SMR could beat solar+battery power cost even now. With sodium and other batteries projected to reduce storage cost, it is even more unlikely that SMR could be price competitive in future grids. SMR is the only way that dying western nuclear industry could attempt to deal with ballooni…

> there is new geothermal power companies getting funding and are transitioning from pilot projects to production. If geothermal works economically (outside of volcanic zones where it already does) then it's game over for any other power source except existing dams though because it solves all problems at once. That'd be a great thing for humanity but I don't think it's worth stopping pursuing alternatives already, b…

Won’t geothermal cool the Earth’s core?
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