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From the article: >> NuScale’s reactor is 65 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter, and is housed in a containment vessel only slightly larger. About the size of tw
by symplee 7y ago
From the article:
>> NuScale’s reactor is 65 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter, and is housed in a containment vessel only slightly larger. About the size of two school buses stacked end to end, you could fit around 100 of them in the containment chamber of a large conventional reactor. Yet this small reactor can crank out 60 megawatts of energy.
>> The review process is brutal—NuScale submitted a 12,000 page technical application—and will likely stretch on for at least another year. But the company has already secured permission to build its first 12-reactor plant at the Idaho National Laboratory, which may start supplying power to communities in Western states as soon as 2026.
- symplee 7y agoA couple extra ideas for these beyond land-based power generation: 1) Put a couple of these on trans-Atlantic cruise ships, designed for speed, to make the journey in 3 days (at 50 MPH) carrying 2,000+ people. 2) Cargo ships that operate on the backbone long haul routes. If there are concerns about these getting too close to shoreline or population, just have them only operate 10 miles from land. Other cargo ships can then load and unload them in open water. (This would require some faster loading/unloading mechanism, maybe something where the front would open up and slide out the entire deck into the other ship.) Thoughts?
- yellow_lead 7y agoThe damage from an emergency at sea could be much greater than one on land.
- missosoup 7y agoThe thing you get in the sea is unlimited free cooling and radiation shielding. You could dump the core onto the seafloor and not really have to worry about anything except the fuel elements eventually corroding and polluting a small area. There are 11 known reactors dumped into various oceans and nothing terrible has come about from them.
- mechhacker 7y agoCorrect The major concerns seem to be hijacking/piracy, clearance to dock at ports, and the general umbrella of proliferation concerns. They don't want people taking these and using the material for bad things. If there was a way around that, then maybe they would be economical. The cheap fuel costs in the past made the NS Savannah non-competitive, but I doubt that's true now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah
- djsumdog 7y agoThat makes a lot of sense; probably why we only see nuclear reactors on military vessels.
- loeg 7y agoI've thought about this somewhat. We only trust the military to run nuclear reactors; ok, can we work with that? The US military is already a grift and jobs program; maybe we can turn the Navy into a grift and jobs program that is also an electricity utility.
- andromeduck 7y agoMake them power all the shipping, oceanic towboats.
- srg0 7y agoNot true. The fleet of Russian icebreakers relies mostly on nuclear propulsion. Wikipedia lists four different cargo ships equipped with a nuclear reactor at some point of time. The regulations and infrastructure are lacking but the interest is there. Burning oil to move goods around the world is not a sustainable long term solution. Nuclear propulsion might be.
- missosoup 7y agoI wonder if we're over-reacting with anti proliferation. It takes 3 very difficult achievements to build a nuclear bomb. Access to reactor grade uranium is only one of them. I'm not sure the dangers of potential proliferation outweigh the tangible deaths per year that result from large ship pollution.
- adrianN 7y agoI'd be more worried about people stealing the reactor. How many armed guards do you want to have on board?
- petre 7y agoI imagine disconnecting a reactor would trigger an alarm. Not particulary easy to steal a hot two bus sized item with a structure built around it. You'd probably need several big cranes and other logistics involved.
- laydn 7y agoA ship can not go faster because it has a powerful engine or a near limitless energy source. A ship's speed is limited by design, especially with hull length. You cannot make a cruise ship go with 50kts.
- ErikCorry 7y ago50mph not 50 knots. I took one of these on a 75 minute trip last weekend. They cruise at 47mph and top speed is 55mph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSC_Fjord_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSC_Fjord_Cat They use huge amounts of diesel fuel, but that would not be the case for a nuclear version. Edit: This version does 67mph and is powered by two 25 megawatt engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSC_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSC_Francisco
- laydn 7y agoSorry, when you said cruise ship, I was thinking "royal carribean" type ships. Cats can go much faster obviously. My point is that the power alone can not make a ship faster. Hull length and shape determines max speed.
- ksec 7y agoStill not quite understanding the point. You mentioned even with unlimited amount of energy and power the speed is still capped and limited by Hull Length and Shape. This reads to me if I could get a Nuclear Fusion reactor in my ship that has 10 times the power my Max Speed would still be the same. This doesn't sound right to me.
- willis936 7y agoDrag increases dramatically above the hull speed. Obviously more power means more speed, but if you want more speed for a fixed power then your hull dimensions really matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_speed
- ErikCorry 7y agoOne of these ships could maximally transport about 100.000 people a year. 50 million cross the Atlantic per year, so you are looking at having 500 of them, probably more when you take into account that they won't be in service 100% of the time. OTOH if it took 3 days probably a lot of people would just stay at home.
- shkkmo 7y agoI personally would love to see the return of viable long distance semi rapid ocean. With the Advent of high speed and low latency satellite internet, a 3 day Atlantic crossing sound like a wonderful break. I already love traveling by train and I've taken numerous 3 day train trips accross the United States.
- Florin_Andrei 7y agoI'm thinking they're getting close to the scale where you could put wings and electric motors on them.
- lgats 7y agoExcept crashes~~
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- onesmallcoin 7y agoThe New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act 1987 is arguably the strongest anti-nuclear weapon domestic legislation in the world. It bans nuclear weapons and propulsion from New Zealand's land, sea and airspace out to the country's 12-mile territorial limits.
- kortilla 7y agoPerhaps they might begin to care about the environment more than their fear of nuclear science and make exceptions for propulsion.
- loeg 7y agoHow is this related? Are you quibbling with the 10 mile figure in GP's comment? Or suggesting that NZ is some substantial portion of the hypothetical target market for GP's hypothetical nuclear cruise ship? Something else? Nuclear-powered US military vessels (subs and aircraft carriers, at least) already sail all around the world. I guess they don't enter NZ's 12 mile zone, or get some exemption when they do.
- js2 7y ago> a 12,000 page technical application I wonder if there’s a bike shed anywhere in there? If so, it’ll be more than a year to review.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoIdaho and the surrounding area already has cheap power... and it’s about to get cheaper! Come on California. Get your act together.
- Animats 7y agoBut the company has already secured permission to build its first 12-reactor plant at the Idaho National Laboratory, which may start supplying power to communities in Western states as soon as 2026. Good plan. That's where to put it. The Idaho National Laboratory, formerly the National Reactor Testing Station, is 890 square miles of mostly empty space. For good reasons.