3 ms·

From the article it’s not clear that they considered geothermal [0] (though perhaps they did and it was discounted; the article doesn’t say either way). I’d als

From the article it’s not clear that they considered geothermal [0] (though perhaps they did and it was discounted; the article doesn’t say either way). I’d also suggest that this could have been the posterboy for modern nuclear. [0] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a2540/4245896/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a2540/42...

philipkglass 8y ago
It's a combined heat and power plant, meaning that they use the waste heat from the electrical generation cycle to provide localized heating. The Chena site mentioned in your linked article is 56 miles from Fairbanks itself, so they'd only be able to get electricity (via wire) from geothermal; there's no way to transport waste heat over that distance. It certainly could be more environmentally beneficial to use electrical heating with geothermal electricity instead of a coal CHP plant. When they say in the article that the numbers didn't pencil out for alternatives, I presume they mean financial numbers. This sort of application is where one of the smallest Small Modular Reactor designs would theoretically be great, but nobody is offering a commercial SMR yet. All SMR designs are still in the R&D phase. The smallest commercially available power reactor designs start at hundreds of megawatts, which is far larger than the 17 MW the campus needed.
- wbl 8y ago
  They could upscale a research design.
  - thomasmeeks 8y ago
    Do you really think it is that simple?
    - wbl 8y ago
      TRIGA thermal power goes up to the area they are thinking about.
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    If you upscale a research design to make a small power reactor, you're designing another SMR.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    They could also buy the aft section of an old Russian sub, couple the propeller to a generator and plumb the cooling system to the campus HVAC. They both sound simple on paper but in reality they'd probably cost more than the natural gas pipeline Fairbanks wishes it had. When public institutions engage in infrastructure projects they need to do a massive amount of work to ensure their ass is completely and totally covered from every angle. Trying to do something off the beaten path, like go nuclear, is a recipe for lengthy court battles and cost overruns. Blazing that trail is best left to the wealthy universities. Modern micro scale nuclear reactors and power stations built out of surplus hardware would be cool but there's a massive cost disadvantage for the first mover.

philipkglass 8y ago

It's a combined heat and power plant, meaning that they use the waste heat from the electrical generation cycle to provide localized heating. The Chena site mentioned in your linked article is 56 miles from Fairbanks itself, so they'd only be able to get electricity (via wire) from geothermal; there's no way to transport waste heat over that distance. It certainly could be more environmentally beneficial to use electrical heating with geothermal electricity instead of a coal CHP plant. When they say in the article that the numbers didn't pencil out for alternatives, I presume they mean financial numbers. This sort of application is where one of the smallest Small Modular Reactor designs would theoretically be great, but nobody is offering a commercial SMR yet. All SMR designs are still in the R&D phase. The smallest commercially available power reactor designs start at hundreds of megawatts, which is far larger than the 17 MW the campus needed.

wbl 8y ago
They could upscale a research design.
- thomasmeeks 8y ago
  Do you really think it is that simple?
  - wbl 8y ago
    TRIGA thermal power goes up to the area they are thinking about.
- philipkglass 8y ago
  If you upscale a research design to make a small power reactor, you're designing another SMR.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  They could also buy the aft section of an old Russian sub, couple the propeller to a generator and plumb the cooling system to the campus HVAC. They both sound simple on paper but in reality they'd probably cost more than the natural gas pipeline Fairbanks wishes it had. When public institutions engage in infrastructure projects they need to do a massive amount of work to ensure their ass is completely and totally covered from every angle. Trying to do something off the beaten path, like go nuclear, is a recipe for lengthy court battles and cost overruns. Blazing that trail is best left to the wealthy universities. Modern micro scale nuclear reactors and power stations built out of surplus hardware would be cool but there's a massive cost disadvantage for the first mover.