There's no "Add to cart" on the page. What kinda online store are they running?
My thoughts exactly.
Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
41–50 of 144 posts
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#42This is small:
https://www.radiantnuclear.com/
Yes, I understand it isn't comparable (1.2MW). But portable doesn't require construction. Surely something in-between can be built?
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#43Some history might be worth going in to here. The AP1000 design was an evolution of an earlier design called the AP600. The AP600 conceptual design apparently didn't find any customers because the economics of it were unappealing compared to larger reactors. In a nutshell, if you're going to build a huge containment building etc etc etc, it doesn't cost (in theory) that much more to go even bigger and get more power…
The best way to solve this problem is to build a huge shipyard-based reactor-making gigafactory that makes floating gigawatt scale reactors that are floated to location. You can operate them offshore or on land. This was actually attempted in the 1970s by Offshore Power Systems (joint venture between Westinghouse and Newport News). They bought and installed the world's largest gantry crane on Blount Island in Jackson…
That is incredible! If this project actually went into production, we would be living in a very different world right now...
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Light water reactors (like the AP300) don't get hot enough for molten salt storage. That requires one of the high temperature Gen IV reactors.
That just means for LWR applications you need to switch the storage media. Any thermal plant could implement heat storage if they identify a medium with a large latent heat of fusion that is around where you want to preheat your working fluid to. The salt used for energy storage is normally a eutectic mixture of ~60% sodium nitrate and ~40% potassium nitrate (not NaCl) and has a melting temperature of ~260 °C. The se…
Heat storage is technically possible at any temperature, but it's much more cost effective at 600°C than 300°C.
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#45Question about SMRs generally: does the fact that random private companies can apply to buy one of these, mean that nuclear reactors are now basically "state-secret free" as a technology? Or are there still state secrets, but they're all in the e.g. uranium enrichment part of the pipeline — that buying one of these gets you no closer to seeing — rather than in the reactor design?
All power reactors are free of state secrets and owned by private institutions. Some information is required by law to remain secret, such as locations of security hardening features, cameras, guns, etc. Good old Eisenhower and Atoms for Peace, 1953.
> Some information is required by law to remain secret, such as locations of security hardening features, cameras, guns, etc.
This was more what I was trying to motion toward — if you sell a power reactor to the private market, aren't you basically guaranteeing that "locations of security hardening features" and so forth will be able to be scrutinized at leisure by foreign state actors who can then use that information to attack other power infrastructure made to the same template?
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#46Time to quote the late Admiral Rickover, again, who described the AP300 in quite a lot of detail back in 1953. [1]
"An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics:
1. It is simple.
2. It is small.
3. It is cheap.
4. It is light.
5. It can be built very quickly.
6. It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”)
7. Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components.
8. The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now."
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best way to solve this problem is to build a huge shipyard-based reactor-making gigafactory that makes floating gigawatt scale reactors that are floated to location. You can operate them offshore or on land. This was actually attempted in the 1970s by Offshore Power Systems (joint venture between Westinghouse and Newport News). They bought and installed the world's largest gantry crane on Blount Island in Jackson…
That is incredible! If this project actually went into production, we would be living in a very different world right now...
People always say this, but if it was so great wouldn’t someone have bought some? The money never seems to work out.
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's harder to find quality people who are willing to relocate their family every time a job is finished.
A large portion of the workforce which recently completed Vogtle units 3 and 4 temporarily relocated to the site from around the country. Many people lived at RV camps opportunistically setup by farmers or others with large empty lots. Especially if you had family, living out of an RV was a good way to minimize expenses and maximize how often you could afford to travel back home. At big jobs like these, especially ou…
Tesla could never reach full capacity at GF1 because they couldn’t find enough people willing to move to Sparks, NV. Also why they picked Austin for that GF.
The nomad tradespeople you mention exist, but they are rare, and most likely dwindling as they get old and die and no one replaces them (a problem all trades currently).
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the track record of AP1000 construction, who do you think would ever order one? I don't see a future for this. If somebody thought it was a feasible design for construction in Western countries, they could buy the half completed sites at Summer for a song. I also think 300MW is too big. It's not really small enough to get the supposed benefits of small and modular. The entire nuclear industry appears to be off…
What's sad is that it's mainly the US that has problems with this. China has managed to bring multiple of this reactor design to fruition while the US still screws around with building just two. I live in Georgia and the almost decade of overruns and corruption are being about to be paid for by Georgia Power customers via rate hikes.
France and Finland have had excessive difficulty with their EPR.
My hypothesis is that modern economies with high wages will simply not be able to build a nuclear reactor economically. It appears to require a certain amount of 20th century technological advancement, but not so much economic advancement that labor costs are too high.
France had a much better track record with nuclear in their first round of building. France can also build large construction projects without the massive cost overruns that the US has had. But they can't seem to get a next gen reactor built.
Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor
#50Some history might be worth going in to here. The AP1000 design was an evolution of an earlier design called the AP600. The AP600 conceptual design apparently didn't find any customers because the economics of it were unappealing compared to larger reactors. In a nutshell, if you're going to build a huge containment building etc etc etc, it doesn't cost (in theory) that much more to go even bigger and get more power…
The best way to solve this problem is to build a huge shipyard-based reactor-making gigafactory that makes floating gigawatt scale reactors that are floated to location. You can operate them offshore or on land. This was actually attempted in the 1970s by Offshore Power Systems (joint venture between Westinghouse and Newport News). They bought and installed the world's largest gantry crane on Blount Island in Jackson…
I believe this is how Rosatom makes their VVER pressure vessels, their factory being called Atommash[1]. They are currently delivering a number of them.