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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

#211

Post by aguyfromnb »

neuronic wrote: post #82
erulabs wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar power is simply indirect nuclear power anyhow. If we can do what’s happening in the sun in a bottle - then no need to produce panels. If there is material in stars to produce solar power, then there is more potential nuclear power. I’m for both, and solar seems distributed in a way that makes me think it’s better for human society, but since stars are made of fissable materials - by definition there is more “po…

Solar is fusion and not fission [1]. If you can't even get that right, why should anyone take these weird pro-fission arguments seriously in 2020? The solution is to keep using existing nuclear power and develop renewables for replacement. Nuclear fission plants take at the very least 10 years (!!) to go online from the day construction begins. And that leaves out years of planning and dealing with contracts. It's to…

>It's too expensive, dangerous and redundant in the face of emerging renewable tech which is becoming cheaper and more efficient by the month.

Why are you comparing the state of nuclear energy today with the potential scientific breakthroughs of renewable energy in the future?

If you compare nuclear of today with renewables of today, then the winner is clear. If you compare the two accounting for potential scientific breakthroughs..who knows?

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#212

Post by mgoetzke »

koheripbal wrote: post #114
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…

There's also some false equivalency in the quote above. "Environmentalists" is a vague term. If we asked Environmental Energy SCIENTISTS, they overwhelmingly support nuclear power.

Scientists are not always thinking through consequences in the real world though. Just the theoretical aspects of something.

Theoretically I find nuclear fission impressive and amazing.

Practically I see no desirable outcome without bad effects especially when coordinated by the private sector with their habit of saving money and squeezing out more profits every year.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#213

Post by jason0597 »

Beltiras wrote: post #178
DrNuke wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to have interested laymen, really, so thanks! The fundamental point is (in my very humble opinion, mind) you may still have a business case for nuclear in 2020 but no feasible return on investment against non-nuclear sources for decades-long experiments that, all in all, are aimed at marginal improvements in the grand scheme of things and the enormous hassle proponents have to face. It is fusion or nothing, apar…

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…

>Gen 4 and liquid fuels are proven to work

Proven to work on lab scale, or an industrial scale? Because one thing is very different from the other

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#214

Post by stjohnswarts »

wazoox wrote: post #177
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…

No, renewable are incredibly expensive, on the contrary. Why is that? Because renewable produce when wind blows or sun shines, and not when we need power. That's the first point, we need to produce exactly as much energy as we consume, at any time. Renewables fail utterly at that, and that's why renewable energy appears so cheap when you simply consider the price at which it's sold on the markets: production occurs a…

I agree, unless there is a huge increase (2 orders of magnitude) in the ability to store energy per cubic meter per dollar then nuclear is the only path forward for bulk energy increases.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#215

Post by ctdonath »

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…

I'm running on partial "utility solar". Cost varies wildly over the year, from 1x to >3x vs regular electric; average is 1.5x ... but that's with a reliable instant backup supply for every second solar supply is insufficient vs demand.

During summer, I run my office 100% solar. It's a fun exercise, but it's deeply reliant on batteries. Storage capacity is a cliff: run out of stored power, you're done. This "brick wall effect" is grossly under-appreciated by solar proponents.

There's a funny thing about supply-and-demand: so long as supply is sufficient, costs are reasonable; when supply actually hits zero, and demand isn't zero, economic badness follows. Solar hits zero daily; batteries have a hard limit of a few hours/days.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#216

Post by Accujack »

aplummer wrote: post #207
chrisco255 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar depends on weather, location and battery storage. Solar cells also require massive amounts of physical area to produce the same amount of energy as a nuclear power plant. And you can't compare a "2 gigawatt" solar installation to an equivalent nuclear installation because nuclear will produce power 24/7 at peak capacity, rain or shine. A solar plant sees a huge amount of variability and only hits peak efficienc…

Solar power in the desert produces power 24/7 by keeping the molten sand hot overnight. It’s also always sunny

That technology is far more expensive than photovoltaic panels.... for example, the solar thermal Ivanpah project is now obsolete for that exact reason.

Additionally, The storage density of molten salt is far lower than the generation capacity of a reactor.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#217

Post by stjohnswarts »

Kaibeezy wrote: post #2

"Production line mistakes may lead to generic defects that propagate throughout an entire fleet of reactors and are costly to fix," (person from University College London) warned. Wouldn’t the knowledge gained by fixing a large one-off reactor be of limited transferable value, as compared to expensive knowledge that could be used to upgrade an existing “fleet” plus improve subsequent versions?

I find that to be an incredibly naive statement to any student of mass production. It's not like they won't be tested on a small scale before they start pumping them out. Sure there is a minute chance but this is just fear mongering.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#218

Post by Accujack »

The_Double wrote: post #197
hannob wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's probably also worth noting that photovoltaics have to be exposed to the sun to work... which means that they can't be protected by armor or bunkers, which means that they're terrifically vulnerable to terrorist or other attack.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#219

Post by Accujack »

neuronic wrote: post #82
erulabs wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar power is simply indirect nuclear power anyhow. If we can do what’s happening in the sun in a bottle - then no need to produce panels. If there is material in stars to produce solar power, then there is more potential nuclear power. I’m for both, and solar seems distributed in a way that makes me think it’s better for human society, but since stars are made of fissable materials - by definition there is more “po…

Solar is fusion and not fission [1]. If you can't even get that right, why should anyone take these weird pro-fission arguments seriously in 2020? The solution is to keep using existing nuclear power and develop renewables for replacement. Nuclear fission plants take at the very least 10 years (!!) to go online from the day construction begins. And that leaves out years of planning and dealing with contracts. It's to…

>Solar is fusion and not fission [1]. If you can't even get that right, why should anyone take these weird pro-fission arguments seriously in 2020?

To nitpick a bit, he didn't say the sun was powered by fusion, he said fissionable elements are present in the sun. Which is entirely true.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#220

Post by stjohnswarts »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #29

Sure why not, but let us not get carried away and think THIS is the solution to global warming. It is unproven, it will be too late, and not scale up quick enough. By unproven I mean that the economics of it is unproven. We have no proof that SMR will be cheaper than large reactors. The article points this out as well. By late I mean at current fast pace of development a lot of will happen with wind and solar in the…

Thanks for the "too late" explanation :) . I feared it was of the "world is going to end in 12 years!" as if climate change is a binary thing.
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