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Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

westinghousenuclear.com

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Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#51

Post by acidburnNSA »

Mistletoe wrote: post #47
aeontech wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There were at least some confounding factors beyond how good of an idea this was. The primary expected electricity customer was oil refineries off the New Jersey coast. The Atlantic Generating Station was to be the first of these power plants. But after the 1973 oil shocks, oil refinery energy demand fell more than expected. By the time things were looking up again, Three Mile Island happened in 1979 and the general sentiment was turning against nuclear.

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#52

Post by acidburnNSA »

nimrody wrote: post #42

This 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?

If you like that one, you'll also love an actually-operated version of this: ML-1 from the 1960s. It operated out in Idaho at the National Reactor Testing Station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML-1

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#53

Post by acidburnNSA »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #39

Reactors are not small enough until they are rolling off an assembly line.

They don't have to be small to roll off an assembly line.

France: https://twitter.com/Mangeon4/status/1632627857837924352

Florida: https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#54

Post by jay_kyburz »

wahern wrote: post #29
jandrese wrote: post #14

Earlier 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…

Yeah, I was thinking if you can afford to pay people to go live on an oil rig you could pay people to live in a small town in a rural area.

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#55

Post by elihu »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #33
rgmerk wrote: post #6

Some 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…

A side benefit of being on or near the ocean is immediate access to a thermal sink. Nuclear power plants (and also fossil fuel thermal plants) divert substantial amounts of water for cooling. If fresh water is increasingly in short supply around the world, that's a problem.

The usefulness of the ocean as a thermal sink though depends on water temperature which can vary a lot depending on where you are.

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#57

Post by jabl »

alliao wrote: post #9
nukeman wrote: post #2

Seriously? I’m insanely pro-nuke, and work in the nuclear sector, but Westinghouse should really focus on their AP1000. They’ve already got deals in place with several countries, and now that they’ve got them running in more than one country, there might be a chance of bringing costs down some. The light water SMR market is getting crowded rather fast. They’re competing with both GE (and their BWRX-300) and NuScale (…

SMR is being sold as smaller thus inferring smaller mess when disaster strikes but I don't see that anywhere can you shed some light on whether it's safer? perhaps the smaller containment meant it can be constructed to a higher threshold?

Smaller tends to mean it's easier to make things like passive emergency cooling systems (e.g. using convection and gravity), so you're not dependent on the diesel gensets actually starting when they're really needed.

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#58

Post by antonvs »

derefr wrote: post #28

Question 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?

The security of nuclear power stations themselves is overseen in the US by the federal government - there’s a good description here:

https://www.nei.org/resources/fact-sheets/nuclear-plant-secu...

I worked on automated conversion of a large collection of documents for nuclear power stations some years back, and there was a lot of bureaucracy around who could access the documents, and how. I wasn’t supposed to take any files home, for example, which meant I couldn’t copy them onto a laptop. Management claimed that this was due to federal laws, but I didn’t ever investigate the legal basis.

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#59

Post by bbojan »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #33
rgmerk wrote: post #6

Some 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…

ThorCon (https://thorconpower.com/) is currently working on this approach.

Re: Westinghouse AP300 Small Module Reactor

#60

Post by DarkNova6 »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #12
rgmerk wrote: post #6

Some 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…

You would think it would be economical to just move the work force around with the projects. You get the talent, but built in place.

it's not only the workforce, it is also the difference in bureaucracy and regulations between each state which limits knowledge transfer.
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