The Case for a Small Modular Reactor Revolution in Nuclear Energy (thedailybeast.com) 250
Dr. Sola Talabi, an adjunct assistant professor of nuclear engineering, believes nuclear power "has the ability to solve" the world's two biggest problems: global energy poverty and global warming.
He tells the Daily Beast, "Nuclear can uniquely address those issues." While novel in the civilian energy sector, SMRs have powered naval warships and submarines for almost 70 years. U.S. naval nuclear reactors have logged more than 5,400 reactor years, and steamed more than 130 million miles without a single radiological incident or radiation-related fatality. This sterling safety record allows the U.S. Navy to operate its reactors largely without controversy even in Japan, a country that has a strong anti-nuclear movement birthed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and amplified by Fukushima...
[T]he plant can remove heat generated by its fuel even if electrical power is lost. Next-generation SMRs are also designed such that they don't require a pressurizing system like the one that failed at Three Mile Island. Even in the extraordinarily improbable event of a core meltdown, Talabi said that SMRs are still remarkably safe. Unlike their large-scale predecessors, the diminutive size of SMRs eliminates the need for active safety systems backed by human operators. If radionuclide particles — an unstable element that's harmful to humans — are released from the core, gravity and other natural phenomena such as thermal and steam concentration will force them to settle safely within the confines of the plant's containment vessel.
In the yet more unlikely case that radionuclide particles breach the containment vessel, Talabi's research indicates they will settle over a much smaller area than if they were released from a large-scale reactor, posing far less of a health and environmental hazard and simplifying cleanup... [E]conomists don't realize that many of the systems required by large-scale reactors, such as the ones that maintain pressure and coolant flow in the plant's core, won't be miniaturized in the smaller plants. They'll be eliminated. SMRs should also be less expensive because they can be factory-fabricated, and their smaller parts will be easier for more manufacturers to produce....
Despite his optimism for SMRs' potential, Talabi acknowledges that they have some drawbacks. Widespread use may slash carbon emissions, but will necessitate increased uranium mining. They also create a security risk, as nuclear fuel will need to be transported between thousands of locations, and reactor sites may be targeted by warring states and terrorists. Government statutes also fail to account for differences between SMRs and large-scale reactors, inhibiting their construction....
That said, Talabi believes that SMRs' potential in solving climate change and global energy poverty far outweighs their risks, and makes overcoming their obstacles well worth it.... "It's not a technology challenge," Talabi said. With public and government support, SMRs could soon be powering the globe with carbon-free electricity. To Talabi, it's just a matter of awareness and understanding.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader WindBourne for sharing the article
He tells the Daily Beast, "Nuclear can uniquely address those issues." While novel in the civilian energy sector, SMRs have powered naval warships and submarines for almost 70 years. U.S. naval nuclear reactors have logged more than 5,400 reactor years, and steamed more than 130 million miles without a single radiological incident or radiation-related fatality. This sterling safety record allows the U.S. Navy to operate its reactors largely without controversy even in Japan, a country that has a strong anti-nuclear movement birthed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and amplified by Fukushima...
[T]he plant can remove heat generated by its fuel even if electrical power is lost. Next-generation SMRs are also designed such that they don't require a pressurizing system like the one that failed at Three Mile Island. Even in the extraordinarily improbable event of a core meltdown, Talabi said that SMRs are still remarkably safe. Unlike their large-scale predecessors, the diminutive size of SMRs eliminates the need for active safety systems backed by human operators. If radionuclide particles — an unstable element that's harmful to humans — are released from the core, gravity and other natural phenomena such as thermal and steam concentration will force them to settle safely within the confines of the plant's containment vessel.
In the yet more unlikely case that radionuclide particles breach the containment vessel, Talabi's research indicates they will settle over a much smaller area than if they were released from a large-scale reactor, posing far less of a health and environmental hazard and simplifying cleanup... [E]conomists don't realize that many of the systems required by large-scale reactors, such as the ones that maintain pressure and coolant flow in the plant's core, won't be miniaturized in the smaller plants. They'll be eliminated. SMRs should also be less expensive because they can be factory-fabricated, and their smaller parts will be easier for more manufacturers to produce....
Despite his optimism for SMRs' potential, Talabi acknowledges that they have some drawbacks. Widespread use may slash carbon emissions, but will necessitate increased uranium mining. They also create a security risk, as nuclear fuel will need to be transported between thousands of locations, and reactor sites may be targeted by warring states and terrorists. Government statutes also fail to account for differences between SMRs and large-scale reactors, inhibiting their construction....
That said, Talabi believes that SMRs' potential in solving climate change and global energy poverty far outweighs their risks, and makes overcoming their obstacles well worth it.... "It's not a technology challenge," Talabi said. With public and government support, SMRs could soon be powering the globe with carbon-free electricity. To Talabi, it's just a matter of awareness and understanding.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader WindBourne for sharing the article
The Navy isn't private industry (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Navy isn't private industry (Score:5, Insightful)
The military has rather different design and maintenance goals than private industry. In particular they don't care very much about the cost of something like a shipboard nuclear reactor. The cost of bringing in coal or oil is far higher than for a stationary power plant on land, and the utility makes it worth whatever good maintenance costs (including covering the rather harsh case that people are shooting at you). This is not to totally reject the premise of the OP, but I'd say the argument is not considering some rather important differences between existing miniature reactors and existing large ones in its comparison.
Your point on costs is spot on. The Navy will spend whatever needed to keep plants running safely, since costs are not part of the equation. Need a $10 gasket? We'll fly it to you immediately, even if it is the only cargo on the plane. I'm kidding, there are no $10 gaskets in a naval nuke plant because everything has a pedigree to trace its production if a problem arises. No overtime for operators, either. 24x7, shipmate. Training costs? We'll spend millions up front to train staff and not worry about attrition rates too much.
Does that mean SMR's are not feasible, no, as you point out; just costs will play a bigger role in commercial use than military.
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SMRs are impractical for civilian use. They just don't offer enough of a cost saving. In fact it's not clear if they offer any saving at all. You still need all the same stuff you need with a normal nuclear power plant, it's only the reactor that is a bit cheaper. The fuel lifecycle in particular is just as shitty as it always was.
Even if money isn't an object, civilian SMRs are still in the prototype stage. Realistically, there is just no way they are going to be widespread enough to make a difference if w
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Do you have any sources with numbers for those claims? SMRs seem like very useful technology, but if the physics/economics of them doesn't work on a fundamental level, they're out of the picture for me.
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https://www.advancedsciencenew... [advancedsciencenews.com]
and while we're at it
https://cleantechnica.com/2021... [cleantechnica.com]
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Now it's overrated mods. Here, catch this comment, too. Since moderation is more or less back to where it was before whatever insult interrupted it a few weeks back, I can afford the karma hit to taunt you mod abusers again.
Re:The Navy isn't private industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Look into the cost of building nuclear power plants. Even if the SMRs were free, you still need all the other stuff. Cooling system with water intake, that has to filter out all the biological stuff. Containment building, famously too expensive for the USSR to build around Chernobyl. Generators, grid tie, operating facilities. Fuel handling areas, spent fuel storage. Infrastructure like roads.
Of course before you build any of that, there needs to be a search for a suitable location, and extensive site survey to make sure it's safe. Certification isn't cheap, there is a lot of work to do before and after it's built. Has to be, for safety.
When it's running you still need all the staff, and when is decommissioned you still need to clean the site up.
SMRs are not going to make nuclear economically viable.
Re:The Navy isn't private industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's what you guys fail to grasp - when you have 5 alternatives to literal worldwide complete devastation, and only one is known to work and provide a pathway out of said destruction, cost doesn't fucking matter.
Global warming is becoming an absolute menace. Solar and wind aren't going to cut it, if we sit around and wait it will be decades before they provide enough power to quickly start reversing greenhouse gas emissions.
Fuck cost. If we had the will we could build out a massive amount of nuclear capacity in the next decade. Sadly, if we hadn't been listening to the anti-nuclear luddites over the last 50 years we wouldn't be in this fucking mess in the first place.
So thanks for that.
Re: The Navy isn't private industry (Score:2)
It's interesting to note that our one attemt at a nuclear powered cargo ship (NS Savannah) was decommissioned about three years before a rise in fuel oil costs would have made it economically competitive. And since that was a emonstration ptoject, never intended to be profitable, it remains to be seen how a container ship designed for efficient operation using nuclear power would compete. My guess is that the economics would be even better.
But then if we want to spend all of our energy shreiking, nothing w
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A nuclear powered cargo ship would probably not be safe, and not accepted at many ports. Cargo ships regularly get abandoned or sink. It wouldn't use a military grade reactor due to proliferation issues (requires highly enriched fuel) and wouldn't be attracting highly skilled operators like the navy has.
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Not yet they don't. The same was also said about microcomputers 50 years ago and now they're everywhere.
Our enemy isn't the media or political organizations - it's ignorance.
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"steamed more than 130 million miles without a single radiological incident or radiation-related fatality. "
What a bullshit statement.
A sunken submarine is in itself a "radiological incident".
All 129 on board die, after loss of nuclear propulsion. Yeah. It killed no one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:The Navy isn't private industry (Score:5, Informative)
In any case, what the article is referring to is loss of life directly related to a radiological incident. What you’re trying to do is say if someone died in an auto accident because a reactor stopped working and caused the traffic lights to go out, that would be a loss of life due to a radiological incident, which is bullocks.
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If a nuclear accident had occurred on a Navy vessel, do you expect that the Navy would have a) transparently published all information and allowed even Greenpeace to inspect the site, or b) swept everything under the rug?
You can't seriously expect the US military (any military) to disclose their safety record. If nothing else, it would be releasing sensitive information about the reliability of one of their most prized assets.
A "sterling safety record" is as suspicious as a used car with a shiny engine and
Re:The Navy isn't private industry (Score:5, Informative)
If a nuclear accident had occurred on a Navy vessel, do you expect that the Navy would have a) transparently published all information and allowed even Greenpeace to inspect the site, or b) swept everything under the rug?
You can't seriously expect the US military (any military) to disclose their safety record. If nothing else, it would be releasing sensitive information about the reliability of one of their most prized assets.
A "sterling safety record" is as suspicious as a used car with a shiny engine and a new set of pedals.
Yeah, I do. I was in the nuclear navy on a submarine. I’m pretty sure we know what happened on the Thresher. I damn well know what happened on my boat. I was there. I know a lot of other submariners and we do talk to each other. On the other hand, you just make stuff up because that’s what you believe.
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You're right about this being a serious nuclear incident - but you've made a mistake which needs correcting now. The sub you've mentioned didn't sink because she was nuclear powered, she sank because she lost main power (propulsion).
The radiation release was a nuclear disaster. The deaths were not.
Re:The Navy isn't private industry (Score:5, Informative)
In a nutshell, the military doesn't have to turn a profit, and it's *profit*, not safety, that is the Achilles heel of the large pressurized water reactor. The reason construction of civilian nuclear power plants has slowed to a trickle is that large PWRs lose money when you count opportunity costs. You can make a quicker and safer buck building natural gas power stations, or even a wind power farms, so why as a private investor will you tie up billions in capital in a nuclear project that won't pay you a dime for over a decade? Until private parties can get a reasonably quick, reasonably big return on investments in nuclear power, the only way to get a lot of reactors built was do it the way the French did it: have the government pay for them.
The promise of SMRs is mainly economic. The way to achieve better economies of scale with nuclear power is not to build larger reactors, it's to build a far greater number of reactors; ones that are small enough they can be manufactured on factory production line and shipped. By doing this you can not only make the reactor cheaper on a dollars/kw basis, you avoid the massive time-value-of-money cost pit you dig at the start of every conventional reactor project.
When someone who ought to know better mentions naval reactors in this context he is being deliberately dishonest. Apart from the (lack of) economic considerations, naval reactors are designed to run on *highly* enriched uranium, typically 93%. Not only is getting to that uranium enrichment level fabulously expensive, anything greater than 90% enrichment is considered weapons grade. If operating thousands of reactors around the world on bomb grade uranium were a good idea, we'd have solved the commercial small modular reactor problem back in 1954 when we launched the Nautilus.
Profit, safety, and non-proliferation: up until recently we didn't have the technology to deliver all three. That's why there are only seven new nuclear plants being built on the entire planet, and six of those seven by state owned enterprises with significant government economic guarantees to any private parties involved. SMRs could change that.
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The promise of SMRs is mainly economic. The way to achieve better economies of scale with nuclear power is not to build larger reactors, it's to build a far greater number of reactors
That's the premise of SMRs, but so far nobody has ever demonstrated even one working unit that delivers on those promises. They can't even deliver a prototype, but they want us to believe that SMRs are the solution. Anyone willing to believe them without proof when nuclear has literally never kept its promises is proving that they are not operating at a useful level, unless you are looking for a useful idiot.
ones that are small enough they can be manufactured on factory production line and shipped. By doing this you can not only make the reactor cheaper on a dollars/kw basis, you avoid the massive time-value-of-money cost pit you dig at the start of every conventional reactor project.
That's the theory, but continuing to state it as such when unproven is a lie, because you're acting
That's all well and good... (Score:2)
...until you realize that small reactors don't necessarily need that much less personnel. I mean physical safety is a big issue. How do you prevent some truck just running into it by accident? How do you prevent people deliberately breaking in to steal any of the radioactive fuel inside of it?
Also since we already have somewhat cheaper means of generating electricity than nuclear (e.g. solar and wind) such plants would only run during shortages, so they are even less economical.
Re: That's all well and good... (Score:2)
These could be placed in the outskirts of a town, surrounded by concrete slabs and secured easily, roughly the size of an 18 wheeler cargo section. Or even easier, buried with tamper proof cover.
Re: That's all well and good... (Score:2)
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plants would only run during shortages ...
Older nuclear plants cannot not be turned on and off to meet variations in demand. If the plant shuts down, it could take weeks to get up to full operation again. I don't know if these new modular reactors are any different in that respect. The general idea of nuclear power is a reliable continuous output. I presume there must be some means of varying the output to match demand, but I don't know how that works.
This need to run continuously appears to be similar to running a steelworks. Once you shut one of
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Well one would obviously have to design it in a way so that it's easy to "throttle" it. Experimental reactors at universities do that all the time. Besides real-life full scale reactors regularly get powered down for a whole variety of reasons.
For example during heat waves many of the nuclear power plants in France shut down because they cannot cool away enough of their heat. Nuclear simply is not a way to get reliable continuous output.
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Experimental reactors at universities do that all the time.
Many of them are zero-power reactors, though. Having said that, yes, modulating the output of a nuclear power plant is more of an economic exercise than a technical one.
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It's not that easy to adjust the output from a nuclear reactor, especially in response to demand. Ideally the output needs to be constant, because varying it requires adjusting several things at once. Control rods, coolant flow, generator power.
Besides, it won't be needed. Demand shaping with smart appliances/chargers and pricing, combined with short term storage (batteries, hydro, compressed air etc.) will do it. You would just be building something that is obsolete before it even starts producing power.
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It's not that easy to adjust the output from a nuclear reactor, especially in response to demand. Ideally the output needs to be constant, because varying it requires adjusting several things at once. Control rods, coolant flow, generator power.
Most plants presently in operation are designed to support this. Load following is routinely done in nuclear power plants in some regions and not done in others by choice (makes little economic sense). Nuclear is very much a dispatchable source of energy which makes it a valuable complement to the mix of intermittent renewables.
The primary limitation with nuclear is it takes hour(s) to substantially ramp output.
Way better to divert heat for other industrial uses than to change output. This is something S
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I guess there must be a difference between throttling back a nuclear reactor, but keeping it ticking over, and actually shutting it down and restarting it.
This topic came up when I discussed nuclear power safety with a friend of mine. His wife is a nuclear safety engineer. Loss of coolant has been a common cause of nuclear power accidents. When steam at very high temperature comes in contact with the zirconium cladding of fuel rods, or the graphite moderator rods, it produces hydrogen, and then it does not
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graphite moderator rods
I'm not sure anyone uses these anymore, other than the eight remaining RBMK units in Russia. (There's still some AGR units in the UK, but those are CO2-cooled, so there should be no water in them and you scenario would not apply.)
My idea was to have a trip to shut down the reactor automatically on loss of coolant, before everything gets too hot
If the coolant doubles as the moderator, which is usually the case, the reaction ceases automatically. You can't even prevent it from stopping.
Apparently, this is not acceptable, because of the cost of restarting the reactor after an unplanned shutdown.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me since you can't NOT shut down a reactor after loss of coolant, so the cost to restart it is immateri
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Older nuclear plants cannot not be turned on and off to meet variations in demand. If the plant shuts down, it could take weeks to get up to full operation again. I don't know if these new modular reactors are any different in that respect. The general idea of nuclear power is a reliable continuous output. I presume there must be some means of varying the output to match demand, but I don't know how that works.
You are correct that nukes are baseload plants, for both economical as well as technical reasons. Fuel burn patterns can be an issue if a plant operates at low power for a long time; for example. The cost of power varies little between 100% and lower power levels since, unlike fossil plants, fuel is not the major variable cost. Changing power levels I not that hard, depending on the type of plant you can make large power changes very quickly.
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... unlike fossil plants, fuel is not the major variable cost.
That is probably how nuclear power got miss-sold politically in the first place. I can't remember what UK politician said this, but the phrase was "too cheap to be worth metering", or something like that. This is of course a classic economics mistake, which is failing to account for externatilities. In the case of nuclear power, the real running cost must include the capital to build the plant, with a finite service life, and more importantly, the cost of handling the waste products, and decommissioning th
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Nuclear power was sold on that basis because if it wasn't, the public would not have accepted the dangers. Despite the pooh-poohing from the fission power fans, there are real dangers. Designs or processes which "could" "solve" the problems with nuclear power so far have not only not done so, but also aren't solutions — they are mitigations. But promise people something free (or nearly so) and you can get them to do all kinds of things against their own interests.
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"I presume there must be some means of varying the output to match demand, but I don't know how that works."
The smaller the reactor the the larger the surface area to volume ratio, and that means that alpha T is larger. Alpha T is the negative temperature coefficient of reactivity.
That means that if power demand goes down, as in the electrical operator reduces the load on the generator, the reactor coolant heats up a bit and becomes less dense, more neutrons leak out of the core, (in a PWR the coolant is a
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Older nuclear plants cannot not be turned on and off to meet variations in demand. If the plant shuts down, it could take weeks to get up to full operation again. I don't know if these new modular reactors are any different in that respect.
The main reason nukes move slowly is that one of the by-products of the fission of U-235 is Xe-135, which is a reactor poison which reduces the number of available neutrons. During normal operations the control rods are positioned exactly to compensate Xe poisoning, but during transients this is not so easy. In short, Xe is a moving target, and if it is not at its steady-state value it may make the reactor prompt-critical (meaning "boom", or at the very least an emergency shutdown), which is why reactor cor
Scenarios (Score:2)
Truck running into it: This has been a solved problem since basically shortly after the Oklahoma bombing. You place bollards and other structures around the building you're keeping it in that will stop a semi that runs into it. We've even gotten very good at hiding them in plain site.
For example, the USAF likes to use rocks. Decorative small boulders, really. We pick pretty rocks that are around 2-3 feet in diameter and place them around the perimeter of buildings we want to protect. Given that a rock
Nothing is consequence free (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing that we do that is free of consequences -- sure, cover the planet with billions of solar panels and wind generators, and ignore the massive GHG produced by the cement needed, the environmental devastation from the rare earths consumed and so forth. Same applies to electric cars -- great idea... I want one myself. But not much will be done for the environment when the resources required are taken into consideration. Nukes are the same -- current plants follow the model of huge installations with massive costs and lengthy construction times. And of course an equally vast distribution network. In the days of coal, power was local for obvious reasons. So when a storm swept through the damage was localized, not taking out a chunk of the continent due to cascading failures. But nukes have special maintenance problems -- the idea that the hot part of the plant could be collected for processing in a specialized plant and a new core dropped in has some attraction. And the amount of fuel required is vanishingly small compared to the bulk of coal and oil now being burned. And compared to 'renewables' or 'unreliables' as some would tag them -- whether we cook dinner would not be dependent on the weather and the state of the community battery bank (also not resource free). We pay our money and take our chances -- but we should look at the whole process, not just the piece we like.
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the amount of fuel required is vanishingly small compared to the bulk of coal and oil now being burned
That's a completely nonsensical comparison, and statement. Uranite is the least concentrated ore we mine, and the most difficult to refine, so the mining activity for nuclear power is extremely outsized.
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Ever see a strip mine for coal?
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Ever see a strip mine for coal?
It looks like a strip mine for uranite, except the tailings are less radioactive.
Ever seen an argument to which you didn't respond with a false dichotomy, or other fallacious logic?
One problem (Score:2)
We don't generally strip mine for uranite though. Hell, some uranium mines aren't even traditional mines. They instead pump in acids then pump them out once they've had a chance to dissolve stuff including the uranium, then they process that.
Hell, it comes down to it, we can start extracting uranium from ocean water.
Fact is, total environmental damage from mining Uranium is a footnote compared to that of mining coal for equivalent energy.
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Several of the largest mines active today are open pits [mining-technology.com].
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There's a great book about just what glatiak told us about. It's called "Sustainable Energy - Without the hot air" and matter-of-factly estimates the cost and impact of many different options.
NIMBP (Score:2)
It's not a race. (Score:3)
Global warming: I'll make vast areas unlivable!
Nuclear energy: Hold my beer.
Good luck (Score:4, Interesting)
The greatest propaganda triumph of the environmental movement over the last 50 years has been in convincing broad swathes of the population that nuclear = atomic bomb.
As we've seen recently, Americans as a group are not a rational people. We are prone to hyperbole, emotionalism, and are ripe for fear mongering and exploitation by the shrillest voices screaming the scariest stories.
The distinction between different nuclear reactor designs cannot overcome that. The population must turn over enough for nuclear power to have a chance again.
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The greatest propaganda triumph of the environmental movement over the last 50 years has been in convincing broad swathes of the population that nuclear = atomic bomb.
It's gaslighting to suggest that people don't want nuclear because they think it's going to make an atomic explosion if it fails. That is on brand, reich-wingers do a lot more gaslighting.
Re:Good luck (Score:4, Interesting)
People fear nuclear explosions because of the radiation more than the explosion. Even if they don't literally think a nuclear power plant can explode like a hydrogen bomb -- although I'd bet a plurality of people would not be certain it was impossible for it to happen -- they worry about the same kind of irradiated hellscape they associate with a nuclear war in the event of a plant mishap. For most people it's not about the blast forces, its the vague uneasiness about the radiation part, both with bombs and plants.
The number of average people who say they don't want nuclear because of some complex reasoning associated plant cost, nuclear waste, cost/benefit advantages of solar/wind is a vanishingly small number, and many of those people are just me-too fake intellectuals parroting an argument they got from team wind or team solar.
It'd be great if much cheaper solar or wind could do it all, but my guess is population and and power demand -- especially when we get to the tipping point where large-scale desalination operations is our only fresh water option in many places -- will drive us to solve some of the nuclear questions (probably waste storage and/or re-processing) and to just live with the others. And probably in some places, it's not even going to be nuclear, it's going to be burning coal and they won't give a shit, because without the power output there's no water.
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It's not the Environmental Movement that convinced people of that. They simply didn't have the influence or power to do so until, relatively recently, long after this comparison was embedded in Society. While I don't have the evidence for this, it certainly sounds much more plausible that this propoganda was spread by the Fossil Fuel Industry, because they saw it as an existential threat.
This may in fact be one of the very rare instances where Envrionmentalists and the Fossil Fuel Industry are in agreement,
Nuclear = economic death. (Score:2, Informative)
Building new nuclear electricity is economically dead in 2021.
It costs double to four time all the other alternatives, fossil or renewables.
And that is without calculating all the cleanup costs.
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Indeed. Given that we have finite resources and need to do something effective _now_, going nuclear would be species-suicide.
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The type of nuclear energy that is prevalent today had been developed because you could produce Plutonium for nuclear weapons as a by-product. So, yes, nuclear energy has definitely been connected with atomic bombs; especially in the early days.
And, also, the peace movement and environment movement have often walked hand-in-hand because of how much a nuclear war (which had been a great fear during the Cold War) would wreck the environment.
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It still is: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/a... [lemonde.fr]
The difference is that the French are not lying about it these days.
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The greatest propaganda triumph of the environmental movement over the last 50 years has been in convincing broad swathes of the population that nuclear = atomic bomb.
And look, it turns out to be true: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/a... [lemonde.fr]
Macron says "Sans nucléaire civil, pas de nucléaire militaire, sans nucléaire militaire, pas de nucléaire civil."
But that is not the issue. The issue is that if we push nuclear _now_ we will get an impact on climate change in 50 years or so. That is far, far too late.
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The greatest propaganda triumph of the environmental movement over the last 50 years has been in convincing broad swathes of the population that nuclear = atomic bomb.
For many decades the defacto choice for electric generation was between nuclear and fossil fuels (sure some niche areas have hydro, and lots of people protest that too).
The anti nuclear lobby is the primary reason why the world has 8500 coal plants and only 440 nuclear plants in operation today. Congratulations on your success LOL.
I don't know anyone who associates nuclear power (Score:2)
Bear in mind that those reactors can be perfectly safe if they are properly run. But it's extremely easy to trick people into handing those reactors over its private businesses will cut corners on maintenance until eventually there's
hmmm... (Score:4, Informative)
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IIRC we know of at least one sub with a nuclear plant that sank. That would seem to qualify as a nuclear malfunction, even if it wasn't malfunctioning before the accident. (No, the reactor [almost certainly] didn't cause the problem. But I'm rather sure it wasn't put into "safe mode" before the problem happened.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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USS Scorpion as well. That one most likely was sunk by a malfunctioning torpedo.
The Thresher was sunk by a series of problems, starting with a seawater leak. You can look it up pretty easily.
The reactor wasn't implicated in either case. The reactor would scram when the power went out if it hadn't before. The bottom of the ocean provides plenty of cooling.
In a previous career I was a MM1/SS. In nuclear power school the Thesher is discussed in some detail. The Scorpion not so much. If Weapons screws up there
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Yup, you play with guns, sooner or later someone's gonna get shot.
Nuclear power's like that. Come to think of it, so is chemical power. Wind and hydro, not so much; a shame they're not enough to fill our energy needs.
Had the Thresher and the Scorpion been land based fixed installations, there would probably have been no problems to begin with (fixed station reactors usually don't suffer weapons malfunctions or loss of propulsion) - but if there ever were a problem, the likelihood of an unplanned radioac
Make that two... (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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This article references traditional SMR Tech (Score:2)
There are newer designs that are more efficient and extremely safe where a runaway meltdown scenario is impossible. Molten Salt is one such example. More fuel options including the use of traditional reactor spent fuel. Far less waste. There's also a new breakthrough fusion design using a high speed projectile pulsed reactor. Every 30 seconds you fire another projectile which causes an instantaneous fusion reaction which heats molten lithium and you exchange the heat to water turning it to steam to spin t
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Not really. The problem is that molten salt, gas cooled, etc. all have merit as an idea and all have massive problems with what was tried to far. These concepts may or may not work out eventually, but even if we push very hard (and there is no sign of that happening), getting them to a viable state will take something like 20 years. After that operate the final prototype for 10 years and another 10 years to industrialize the thing. Then build it in numbers. Expect an impact on climate change in around 50 ye
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We have renewables that are good and getting better and can be deployed fast. We have storage that gets better and can be deployed fast enough. Both are already massively cheaper than nuclear and are still evolving and getting better, while nuclear has been stagnant forever. Sure, there is some push to revitalize nuclear, but that will not have an effect in time and will be decades too late and that is if it works at all. There really is no argument that we need to go into renewables all out and do it now.
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Molten salt has been tried and it turns out it's terrible. If you don't know this it's because you don't want to know.
MSRs are considered safer than conventional reactors because they operate with fuel already in a molten state, and in event of an emergency, the fuel mixture is designed to drain from the core to a containment vessel where it will solidify in fuel drain tanks. This prevents the uncontrolled nuclear meltdown and associated hydrogen explosions (as in the Fukushima nuclear disaster) that are at risk in conventional (solid-fuel) reactors.[2] They operate at or close to atmospheric pressure, rather than the 75- [wikipedia.org]
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The only MSRs which have been operated were tiny demonstration plants operated for short periods at a time. Nobody has ever demonstrated a commercial MSR which did not have show-stopping problems with corrosion and embrittlement.
Mixing your nuclear fuel with salt just means a larger volume of radioactive waste, it's not a good plan.
There is no way to make fission power make sense for the general case, only for special cases like space travel or a couple of niche cases in war, specifically only the very larg
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Mixing your nuclear fuel with salt just means a larger volume of radioactive waste
It just finally dawned on me how ignorant you really are on this.
They are NOT adding 'salt' to this. I am guessing that by 'salt', you think that it is only Sodium Chloride. That is just 1 salt.
The fact is, that a salt is any 2 elements with an ionic bond which results in a neutral electrical charge.
As such, they are taking the fuel elements, which have a charge, and then adding a cation/anion element to it to make it neutral. In addition, depending on the elements added, they will be designed to NOT [wikipedia.org]
Enough with the nuke shit. (Score:3)
The environmental and economic arithmetic will not change. Fission reactors are bad investments for general purposes.
Re:Enough with the nuke shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's possible that current events in Ukraine with regards to Russia has thrown fuel certainty into the gutter for the foreseeable future, when Germany was basically going whole-hog on natural gas, and it turns out Gazprom(the Russian NG company) was lobbying behind the scenes against nuclear.
Ergo, renewed interest without the dissenting voices being funded as much.
That said, I've seen a steady trickle of these articles for close to a decade.
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or it's almost like smarter countries are moving foward with rolling out reactors in an efficient manner, and making waste storage without the drama and angst the USA has causing the "investment" equation to be falsely in the red.
Meanwhile, coal is killing millions a year.
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It likely is. There are several companies that attempt to push SMRs. As none of them has even a proven design, let alone a working prototype (which means availability in numbers is at the very lest 30 years in the future and meaningless for what we need to to _now_), they probably hope to get bought before it becomes clear how far away from delivering anything they actually are.
Still too expensive (Score:2)
The article seems to miss the point that the US Navy only puts nuclear reactors on Submarines and Aircraft Carriers. Nuclear power for other surface combatants (e.g. cruisers) has been dropped because it is not cost effective. The last of the 9 nuclear-powered cruisers in the US Navy was commissioned in 1980, and decommissioned in 1999, because it was too expensive to operate.
No incidents? (Score:2)
"While novel in the civilian energy sector, SMRs have powered naval warships and submarines for almost 70 years. U.S. naval nuclear reactors have logged more than 5,400 reactor years, and steamed more than 130 million miles without a single radiological incident or radiation-related fatality"
Nine nuclear submarines have sunk, either by accident or scuttling. The Soviet Navy has lost five (one of which sank twice), the Russian Navy two, and the United States Navy (USN) two.
I wish there was a definition for "Small" (Score:2)
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"then we'd need yet another kind of reactor to reprocess the fuel" now you've gone and done it. I expect Thorium Guy to show up soon and have another existential moment with himself.
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One other issue in terms of naval use of SMRs- they can do so in part because the US military has a massive budget so they don't need to worry about practical costs nearly as much
And also because navy vessel are fairly small, even the big ones (and in any case, even the big ones would rather use their tonnage for people and weapons, not just for propulsion).
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Most of your comments are spot-on.
I know, because someone modded me troll. That's a sure-fire way to know I'm scoring hits.
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You make some valid observations and then throw in a few that make no sense whatsoever, such as the following:
Reactors have per-unit decommissioning costs which will be multiplied by SMRs.
Which word did you find confusing? It's quite straightforward.
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That article frankly doesn't make a compelling argument against SMRs.
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It makes zero compelling arguments for or against anything aside from "progress takes time". I note that the cost of fighter jet programs are never seen as "prohibitively expensive". And it absolutely is things like Chernobyl and Fukushima that cause people to make ridiculous arguments against nuclear energy while framing it as economic concern.
We're so bad at thinking.
Re:Nuclear reactors in millions of homes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nuclear reactors in millions of homes (Score:5, Informative)
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Probably less than coal and oil working normally.
Just to put things in perspective, if every nuclear reactor in activity (441 of em) went full chernobyl, and delivered the worst estimated number (60000 deaths, including minor contributions), still takes only 7 years of air pollution by power generation to kill the same number of people.
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He would probably have to create a centrifuge to further refine the radioactive material into a bomb.
But there are indeed some terrible possible cases like the Goiânia accident.
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Assholes spoil everything... (Score:2)
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We've know how to make atomic batteries for decades now. Problem is, we can't figure out how to let Joe Sixpack use 'em - we know that the dumber the end user, the higher the likelihood he'll find a way to tear an atomic battery open to see if it really glows inside.
Locally operated SMR's are like atomic batteries, flying cars and implantable electronics - really nifty sci-fi stuff. Sure, we can do those things - but the body count's going to be astronomical. And the mess . . . who's going to clean up
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Things like that happen in South American countries where they lack public education. So yeah, I can understand why this would be concerning in the US considering our GOP-led legislatures and their priorities regarding education budgets.
And you vastly overestimate Joe Sixpack's curiosity. Anyone dumb enough to believe "Trump won in 2020!" without interrogating such notions further isn't predisopsed to opening things to find out how they work. They're just fine assuming they know the answer.
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We've know how to make atomic batteries for decades now. Problem is, we can't figure out how to let Joe Sixpack use 'em - we know that the dumber the end user, the higher the likelihood he'll find a way to tear an atomic battery open to see if it really glows inside.
Locally operated SMR's are like atomic batteries, flying cars and implantable electronics - really nifty sci-fi stuff. Sure, we can do those things - but the body count's going to be astronomical. And the mess . . . who's going to clean up that mess down there?
SMR may be local, but not *that* local. It is not going to be placed inside each and every home. Even for the smallest form it is probably one per town or one per village. And they will all be sealed or locked from non-technicians, similar to electrical substations in current power grid.
Small scale, parallel operation (Score:4, Informative)
The old yarn of "costs double to four time all the other alternatives" doesn't necessarily hold true if you change the paradigm. Plus, there's still different usage scenarios that can make them a valuable niche product.
For example, what about a remote Alaskan village? Solar doesn't really work out for them, wind has to be specially hardened against the cold, and you still need diesel generator backup in case the wind dies down because the scales make running a power line to them prohibitive. So they can't load balance with other areas well.
A small nuclear reactor could not only provide reliable electricity, but reliable district heating. Double savings.
Yes, they are used in ships, they make sense there due to the ""small size"", but absolutely not on land.
Which means that if we can use them in the shipping industry, we can get rid of a lot of our more polluting fossil fuel use. Bunker Oil is nasty.
That said, while indeed "fixed costs don't scale", this is something where you can make a lot of fixed costs in consideration with the old paradigm of 1-4 huge reactors scale in a paradigm of dozens of smaller generators.
For example, you may be able to have a team on site constantly just doing replacements for sending units back to the factory for refurbishment if you have enough reactors. This means the plant stays in operation, eliminating the costly downtime, and you don't need to pay surge prices for workers to do a relatively expensive replacement job.
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I gotta think anyone with that level of curiosity is informed enough to know that doing so would be deadly.
And your concern here is solved with the most minimal of physical security measures.
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that's every low estimate, NEA estimates 200 years and say further exploration and extraction tech improvements could double that. I'm willing to kick energy can half or four centuries down the road.
Even half a century is a long time perfect thorium or maybe even get very lucky and have fusion. But the thorium breeding works, done deal.
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NEA estimates 200 years and say further exploration and extraction tech improvements could double that.
Problem is, those improvements have to not come at the expense of sustainability. Uranium mining has moved towards brining, though some of the largest sources are still open pit.
I'm willing to kick energy can half or four centuries down the road.
That's the problem with these mining improvements that you're counting on. If you kick that can down the road it might not turn out like you imagine. And if we become more dependent on nuclear power then there becomes more pressure to refuel the reactors at any cost the closer we get to the deadline.
Meanwhile we have the tech right