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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

#131

Post by tstrimple »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #6

They're all ridiculously fuel inefficient and we're going to have to figure out how to dispose of thousands or tens of thousands of these reactors. Aside from that one that starts pre buried, where the plan is to just leave a spent nuclear reactor buried in a hole. A cost that will almost certainly be externalized to the taxpayers. The promise here is the rich fleecing the average citizen. Getting downvoted wicked ha…

It's easy when you just ignore all the externalities! I'll be paying for the decommissioned nuclear plant near us for the next 20+ years through my electric rates. The plant is closed and no longer operational but still has to be staffed and guarded for decades during the decommission process. Imagine this issue scaled up across thousands of SMRs.

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

#132

Post by thinkcontext »

There are no working SMR's ready to be deployed in the West. The company (NuScale) that was furthest along had its flagship project die after cost estimates ballooned. Its other project was a crypto scam.

Whether any of these companies work out and make it to serial production is very speculative.

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

#133

Post by marshray »

UltraSane wrote: post #84
ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you can’t assume ”always on” anymore. Why should consumers choose expensive nuclear powered electricity when cheap renewables, or stored renewables are available? They don’t and now capacity factors crater. Leading to what was once seen as ”baseload” plants being forced to become peakers. And running a nuclear plant with those fixed costs as a peaker/firming becomes stupidly expensive per MWh prod…

Baseload is simply the lowest wattage your grid demands in a time period. Solar and wind have not made it irrelevant at all. All of the demand from data centers very much assumes constant reliable power which is in fact a perfect match for nuclear.

Data centers are only 5-10% of all US electric power demand. A significant fraction of that load is responsive to spot market price. DCs incorporate their own battery storage infrastructure for backup purposes and some even sell stored energy back to the grid during times of high demand.

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

#134

Post by dalyons »

testing22321 wrote: post #102
bryanlarsen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

which is great, but as i understand it will still lead to an overall decline in share of nuclear power. The scale of their power production is unfathomable

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

#135

Post by marshray »

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 scam here is presenting average occupational accident rates as a measure of "safety" when the obvious risk of nuclear power is the rare large-scale events which render large areas of land uninhabitable for generations while producing few directly-attributable deaths.

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

#136

Post by Animats »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #76
DennisP wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But coal is still 49%. The whole point of nuclear in a carbon-free, mostly-renewable grid is to avoid needing enormous amounts of storage and overproduction. That's a need that doesn't come up when you're still half fossil. If you want to decarbonize as fast as possible, it makes sense to focus on rolling out wind/solar/battery as fast as possible for now, but keep developing nuclear technology to cover the last bit…

The problem is that the economics of a ”firming”/”peaking” nuclear reactor is absolutely stupid due to essentially being only fixed costs. It is already stupidly expensive when running at 100% 24/7. Now try running it only when renewables and storage doesn’t deliver.

That's a fundamental problem with nuclear plants. Their classic "baseload" niche is gone. Like the intermittent sources, wind and solar, they need storage to hold what they overproduce during peak periods.

This is also true of geothermal, which, like nuclear, is almost all fixed capital cost.

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

#137

Post by derriz »

bryan0 wrote: post #122
pfdietz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NuScale infamously failed to get their reactor funded in Utah (UAMPS and the CFPP), it was just too expensive. Costs kept rising, large utilities declined to sign up, and in the end those utilities remaining were going to hit the contractual off ramp so it was just cancelled. I have some links to minutes of municipal utility meetings in Idaho Falls that showed the wheels coming off (even though there was great local…

> Their design appears to have it roots in the (false) idea that what was holding back nuclear was perception of safety, rather than cost. And why do you think they cost so much? Because people need to believe they are safe from catastrophic failure

Large scale civil engineering projects will always cost more than simply installing stuff that comes almost fully assembled from a factory (solar, wind, battery or small/medium gas turbines). Opex will always be much higher for a generation facility which requires 850 FTE specialist employees to operate (US average per plant) compared to the minimal requirements for on-site employees for utility scale solar or wind facilities. Generation tech which requires no fuel or hazardous waste handling and storage also has an obvious cost advantage. None of these factors have anything to do with “need to believe”.

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

#138

Post by testing22321 »

dalyons wrote: post #134
testing22321 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

which is great, but as i understand it will still lead to an overall decline in share of nuclear power. The scale of their power production is unfathomable

Agree.

They’re building a massive amount of nuclear. They’re building a monumental amount of solar+wind.

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

#139

Post by bryanlarsen »

testing22321 wrote: post #102
bryanlarsen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which works out to about 4 per year. And most of them are under 1GW.

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

#140

Post by MachineMan »

will5421 wrote: post #110
stymaar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

It could prevent volcanoes from erupting perhaps.
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