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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

#81

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

DanTheManPR wrote: post #18

A lot of people are betting serious money that they will cheaper, more flexible, faster to build, and safer. Including me - I'm working in the industry, and I think they might very well be future backbone of energy production. But there's a real possibility when all this shakes out that SMR's only advantage will be their flexibility. And that might be enough. A major issue with gigawatt scale nuclear is that it's fra…

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 produced.

See this Australian ”baseload” coal plant forced into a peaker role or be decommissioned.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-13/australian-coal-plant...

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

#82

Post by brennanpeterson »

DanTheManPR wrote: post #52
arpinum wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SMR is driven by funding, insurance, and regulation. China doesn't have these issues and builds conventional at a great price. China is building 37 reactors, only 4-5 are SMR-type units, and are larger at 600MW. The rest are standard PWR, and the 40+ in planning are dominating by standard PWR. Regulatory risk is too high, building too infrequent to understand costs, funding for first-of-its-kind is too hard for nucle…

This is an important point: in a lot of ways, SMRs are a strictly worse than 1000MW plant. The potential financial benefits come from all the other factors you mentioned. I would rather have a "worse" nuclear power plant that actually gets built.

Why? It then proves nuclear is uneconomical?

Regulatory arbitration like this serves nothing?

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more nuclear, but bad nuclear is not in fact better than none.

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

#83

Post by dalyons »

inglor_cz wrote: post #50
soco wrote: post #3

With solar and batteries getting cheaper and cheaper, is this still a topic? Or at least for the time being until that "cheaper" gets cheaper enough?

Scaling is a problem. How many batteries do you need to power, say, entire Scandinavia during winter? That would be a lot of lithium, btw. "Dunkelflaute" periods when it is dark and no wind to run the wind turbines are common in northern winters, IIRC the longest one a few years ago was 12 days long. Which means that in order to have a reasonable buffer against it, you would need enough batteries to supply the entire…

boy am i tired of hearing that Dunkelflaute word as if its some kind of gotcha. Even ignoring the fact that you can continue to source power from other geographies during a localized phenomenon..... Just burn gas in peaker plants for the few days a year that this happens. That small amount of emissions wont matter for the next 50 years of decarbonization, after which we'll likely have plenty of other options.

The absolutism in all these arguments is so tiring, as if its not 100% perfect solution for 100% of every imaginable scenario than its no good. 95% reduction over a year would be astounding, we would have won the climate battle.

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

#84

Post by UltraSane »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #81
DanTheManPR wrote: post #18

A lot of people are betting serious money that they will cheaper, more flexible, faster to build, and safer. Including me - I'm working in the industry, and I think they might very well be future backbone of energy production. But there's a real possibility when all this shakes out that SMR's only advantage will be their flexibility. And that might be enough. A major issue with gigawatt scale nuclear is that it's fra…

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.

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

#85

Post by UltraSane »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #45
fasterik wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with 100% solar+batteries is that you need to massively overbuild for the system to meet demand. It's far more cost-effective to have some portion of generation come from a firm, weather-independent source. The main options are fossil fuels, hydro, geothermal, and nuclear. Since fossil fuels emit carbon and hydro and geothermal are geographically limited, nuclear is the best option in a lot of places.

> firm That's the opposite of what you want. You want something that is cost-effective to operate at a 10%, 1% or 0.1% duty cycle. Like nat gas or hydro. Not nuclear. And overbuilding isn't the only lever you have to ensure coverage meets your target 99.99% level -- geographic diversity works really well (the wind is always blowing somewhere), and wind power production is usually negatively correlated with solar powe…

You are very wrong. US base load demand is around 400GW that must be provided 24/7

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

#86

Post by PowerElectronix »

testing22321 wrote: post #15
unglaublich wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, gas and oil plants are actively emitting pollutants that kill thousands. And nuclear still is the safest energy sort available.

> And nuclear still is the safest energy sort available. Surely solar is orders of magnitude safer.

Only if you remember to reapply sunscreen every few hours.

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

#87

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

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.

Why should your data center buy multiples more expensive nuclear powered electricity when renewables or stored renewables are available? They won’t.

And even if they sign a PPA the renewable arbitrage they could do exerts large downward pressure on the price they are willing to pay.

Which is to say, they would want to sign a contract saying ”deliver cheap reliable electricity when renewables and storage doesn’t do it”.

And now you are trying to fit an extremely CAPEX heavy square into a round OPEX sized firming hole.

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

#88

Post by arpinum »

brennanpeterson wrote: post #82
DanTheManPR wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point: in a lot of ways, SMRs are a strictly worse than 1000MW plant. The potential financial benefits come from all the other factors you mentioned. I would rather have a "worse" nuclear power plant that actually gets built.

Why? It then proves nuclear is uneconomical? Regulatory arbitration like this serves nothing? Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more nuclear, but bad nuclear is not in fact better than none.

It gives evidence the viability of nuclear is a political choice. China is using proven designs and delivering a good price for base load.

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

#89

Post by dalyons »

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.

it is not at all a perfect match for nuclear. Solar produces incredibly cheap power for the daytime hours, pushing the nuclear off the grid (why would a data center buy expensive nuke power in the hours when cheap renewables are available?). Nuclear needs to be running and selling power at its high price 24/7 for it to be even close to economically viable. Only supplying power that people want(due to its high price) during the night is fatal to nuclear.

Thats what OP means by baseload generation being irrelevant.

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

#90

Post by moogly »

inglor_cz wrote: post #50
soco wrote: post #3

With solar and batteries getting cheaper and cheaper, is this still a topic? Or at least for the time being until that "cheaper" gets cheaper enough?

Scaling is a problem. How many batteries do you need to power, say, entire Scandinavia during winter? That would be a lot of lithium, btw. "Dunkelflaute" periods when it is dark and no wind to run the wind turbines are common in northern winters, IIRC the longest one a few years ago was 12 days long. Which means that in order to have a reasonable buffer against it, you would need enough batteries to supply the entire…

Fission reactors in multiple European countries had to shut down due to heatwaves. And in Scandinavia (Sweden), they are "routinely" stopped for scheduled and most importantly unscheduled maintenance.

But those don't have scary sounding German names, I guess.

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