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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

#261

Post by dghughes »

imtringued wrote: post #44
mytailorisrich wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They rely on water for cooling so are built near a source of it, be it the sea or a river.

Rivers tend to have different flow rates over the course of the year. If there is a heat wave the plant may not have enough water for cooling. The ocean is more dependable.

Here in Canada in my region the nuclear power plant is located on a bay in New Brunswick. The bay has the highest difference in tides in the world at high tide the water is 16m (53 feet) higher than low tide.

But in Ontario where the biggest nuclear power plants are located. Two are next to Lake Ontario, and one is by Lake Huron.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#262

Post by manfredo »

cesarb wrote: post #258
scotradamus wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy production really isn't the issue. Energy storage is. We produce way more energy than we use. We currently do not have an easy way to store it. So why generate more than we need? Well, we need to have power available to prevent brown outs, especially right after work when everyone gets home and flips their light switch (so to speak). Second; it is actually more efficient to keep the generators fully spun up.

> We produce way more energy than we use. [...] So why generate more than we need? Well, we need to have power available to prevent brown outs That's not how it works. If you generate more than you need, you will have the opposite of a brown out (overvoltage and/or overfrequency). Generation and consumption of power have to always be precisely matched. > especially right after work when everyone gets home and flips t…

Excess energy is an easy problem to solve: use it to desalinate water, produce hydrogen fuel to power ships, or any of several other uses.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#263

Post by logfromblammo »

rusk wrote: post #106
christophilus wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear energy has a PR problem that is very hard to solve. It doesn’t help that movies dramatize it. From what I remember, the only people who died due to Fukushima were those that died of fear. The reality is that nuclear is remarkably safe, clean, etc.

I'd imagine the death toll from Fukushima will probably not be fully estimable for a few years yet.

By human emotional calculus, it is better for a million people to experience on average 0.001 of a mortality event than for 1000 people to be killed outright.

When we measure such things in terms of "increased cancer risk" and "possible thyroid dysfunction", it is far easier to discount, particularly as young people are not tremendously concerned when people above a certain age die of diseases that are already typical in the aged.

So even if we knew it exactly, people would still care less. It might be more relevant if, instead of death toll, it could be given a money value derived from additional healthcare expenses for exposed individuals, because young people implicitly know that they are the ones who pay when old people get sick.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#264

Post by claudeganon »

fao_ wrote: post #202
RankingMember wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. "Advancement as a species" seems to imply a sort of consensus that doesn't really exist.

Exactly. Hegel developed a theory that historical progress goes always forward, or towards better things. Capitalist-based theory says that Capitalism is the inevitable outgrowth from Feudalism, which is false (Meiksins-wood showed that Capitalism is an idea that was enacted through force, not an inevitable outgrowth of the previous systems). Communist theory says that Capitalism inevitably fails and tends towards So…

> Hegel developed a theory that historical progress goes always forward, or towards better things.

This is a popular supposition, but is mostly a misunderstanding of Hegel, promulgated by Left Hegelians like Marx. Hegel’s argument was that thought moves toward a greater state of contradiction, not progress, but that this evolved sustainment of the contradiction represents a more rational form.

Todd McGowan at the University of Vermont wrote a whole book on this subject:

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/emancipation-after-hegel/97802...

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#265

Post by 1MoreThing »

arcticbull wrote: post #255
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…

> ... with some maintaining it is dangerous and expensive Expensive, probably. Dangerous? Not according to the data. Lowest deaths per terawatt-hour of any energy source including solar. Yes, even if you count Chernobyl, Fukushima (where 6 folks died) and Three Mile Island (nobody died) [1] [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...

Death is not the only measurement of danger.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#266

Post by WhompingWindows »

arcticbull wrote: post #255
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…

> ... with some maintaining it is dangerous and expensive Expensive, probably. Dangerous? Not according to the data. Lowest deaths per terawatt-hour of any energy source including solar. Yes, even if you count Chernobyl, Fukushima (where 6 folks died) and Three Mile Island (nobody died) [1] [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener...

It's not "probably" expensive; it's undeniably very expensive, which is why it's a non-starter in most of the world. Look at South Carolina's fiasco with nuclear...the only country doing nuclear is China, which is known for massive infrastructure spending.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#267

Post by wazoox »

fsh wrote: post #205
wazoox wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have any sources for your claim of batteries multiplying the cost for renewables by "5, 10 or more" in a realistic grid scenario? Did you take into account that most energy storage is done with hydro, not batteries? I haven't had time to carefully review the literature, but there seem to be quite a few papers that claim that storage for a 100% renewable grid would not be such a big issue.

Basically renewables produce 15-20% of the time (30 to 40% for offshore wind). Let's be generous and start with 30% of the time. You need storage to provide 70% of the demand. So for every GWh or required power, you need 700MWh of storage. The famed Tesla Mega battery is a puny 129MWh...

You must account for the fact that there could be no sun or no wind for several days, therefore be able to store incredible amounts of power, far beyond the scale we know of.Then the sheer space required for renewable power is staggering. As I said, the biggest solar plants are 600MW to 1GW and occupy tens of square km. Now imagine supplying 10s of GW this way.

As someone joked on twitter, if you covered the whole Fukushima exclusion zone (250 km2 or so)with solar panels, it wouldn't come close to the Daishi nuclear plant annual power output.

For a detailed discussion on these matters, see https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/renewables/100-re...

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#268

Post by WhompingWindows »

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…

They can't provide the $/kwh quote because it's not even an implemented technology yet...it's a propositional technology and they can't even provide a quote that solar/wind could smash easily in the majority of markets.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#269

Post by logfromblammo »

p_l wrote: post #113
rusk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think nuclear waste could be "burned" ... I was given to believing that containment was the only option right now. I'm familiar with your (1) (2) (3) items, but again, from what I've read these aren't fully satisfactory. (1) is probably ideal but hasn't really been cracked, (2) and (3) are just different facets of containment, but (3) is admittedly the most plausible right now. We can tolerate a limited amou…

Fast reactors can burn waste pretty well, as few other designs. However, it's politically problematic because it involves using plutonium burning (not as fuel, but produced in the reactor while burning down uranium). This is not liked by certain governments, even if theoretically NPT gives a framework to do it safely, and large scale commercial reprocessing essentially died after India used Canada-built CANDU reactor…

Global-politically, there shouldn't be any problem for the US, UK, France, Russia, and China to have fast-breeder reactors, but it still may be a concern in local politics due to environmental or terrorism concerns.

Nuclear waste has to be shipped to the facility. All the shipping routes from all the nearest waste-producing reactors converge there. That's naturally a concern to all those who live nearby.

Re: Rolls-Royce plans mini nuclear reactors by 2029

#270

Post by LatteLazy »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #232
EliRivers wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you have not disagreed with me, but you have introduced additional intermediate stages and conditions with which I disagree. I disagree that it is necessary for technology to be made profitable before becoming commoditised. I would argue that some technologies only become profitable when they are commoditised. There is no reason to think shrinking it will make more profitable. I cannot see into the minds of…

He's also failing to identify hidden costs like destroying the global climate that we're most likely going to absorb at the government level despite what greedy lasseiz-fare capitalists want to admit

Betting on a world wide, full funded program to reduce carbon is... Courageous. Betting it will use nuclear and small nuclear and rr's small nuclear and that they will get it ready on schedule and deliver it in time to make any difference? Let me sell you some magic beans I have.
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