11 ms·

No word here on how much they will cost to build and decommission or how much water they require, or what the plan for waste management is. I'd love to see som

No word here on how much they will cost to build and decommission or how much water they require, or what the plan for waste management is. I'd love to see some numbers here because without them it's easy to assume this is not cost competitive with solar+battery in +5 years given current trends.

boomboomsubban 7y ago
I imagine you can find all sorts of numbers in their 12000 page report to the NRC, I assume located here https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/nuscale.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/nuscal...
- Animats 7y ago
  Yes, and this is the main document to read.[1] There's some hand-waving on safety issues in Table 1.9-2. NuScale passes the buck on flooding issues to the plant owner. Also, there's some hand-waving on software safety issues: "The NuScale design applies RG 1.152, Revision 3 and IEEE Std. 7-4.3.2-2003 that it endorses. For RG 1.168, the requirements of IEEE 1012-2004 are tailored to the NuScale I&C development lifecycle, which is different from the conceptual waterfall lifecycle in IEEE 1012-2004. The applicable tasks from IEEE 1012-2004 to the I&C development are mapped. Some administrative mandatory requirements in the standard conflict with established Engineering or QA documentation requirements. The requirements of IEEE 1028-2008 are tailored to the NuScale I&C development lifecycle." This may mean "We use Agile and your outdated rules don't apply". The key concept is that, since these plants are passively cooled and don't require pumps for cooling, many of the concerns about keeping cooling water flowing to prevent a meltdown don't apply. "For the NuScale design, the safety analysis shows that core damage does not occur during any design basis event.", says the application. What could possibly go wrong? A big concern is that NuScale proposes to put up to 12 reactors in one connected pool. I haven't found the part yet where they discuss what happens if one leaks and contaminates the whole pool. Or the pool springs a leak and drains into the ground. These are not small plants. A 12-unit plant is 720MW of electrical power, so it's getting close to a typical gigawatt sized plant. More small units, instead of one big one. The history of power reactor meltdown incidents is roughly as follows: - Three Mile Island - meltdown, big containment vessel, fully contained, expensive but not hazardous. - Chernobyl - fire, meltdown, no containment vessel, radioactive material dispersed over large area. - Fukishima - meltdowns, undersized containment vessels breached, radioactive material dispersed over moderate sized area. A certain amount of skepticism about designs that "don't need" a big containment vessel is perhaps justified. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf
  - xorfish 7y ago
    There are designs that don't need a large containment vessel because they operate at normal pressure and there is no water that might expand by a factpr of 1000. Look at the IMSR.
    - Animats 7y ago
      NuScale is a pressurized water reactor whose containment sits in a water-filled pit.
  - andromeduck 7y ago
    Isn't the pool secondary containment so leaking into the pool is bad but not really any different than if primary containment failed for any other plant. You can find leaks in pools pretty easy by using a double lining and distributed sensors or in closed environments like this, by measuring net flows and looking out for any net change in volume.
    - baking 7y ago
      The pool is for passive secondary cooling if the primary fails. It is outside the containment and is intended to boil off over 30 days if there is a complete blackout. 30 days is all you need for the decay heat because after that air cooling is sufficient.
      - Animats 7y ago
        Not 30 days. 72 hours. "Water inventory in the reactor pool is adequate to cool the NPMs for at least 72 hours without adding water." NRC filing [1], page 41, bottom of page. A NuScale press release does say that. "The system is capable of providing 30 days of cooling without adding water to the pool."[2] The web site hype goes even further: "Should it become necessary, NuScale’s SMR shuts itself down and self-cools for an indefinite period of time, with no operator action required, no additional water, and no AC or DC power needed."[3] But that's not what the NRC filing says. Looks like they make bigger claims when they think they can get away with it. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf [2] https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/sites/nuscalepower.newshq.businesswire.com/files/doc_library/file/nuclear-exchange-sept-2011.pdf https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/sites/nuscalepower.newshq.... [3] https://www.nuscalepower.com/ https://www.nuscalepower.com/
- mdorazio 7y ago
  Thanks for this link. I've only read a few sections, but I can't find any cost info at all. Also they're not really saying anything about waste management that's useful. Summary: "The SRWS processes solid waste by dewatering, decontaminating, surveying, sorting, and classifying solid waste for storage and eventual shipment to licensed offsite facilities." (basically the same process with the same issues I have with "regular" nuclear plants). They do answer my water concerns, though - looks like no external cooling water is needed in normal operation, but their design is food susceptible so it needs to be built in places that cannot flood.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
The article includes an interesting note at the end: > “I am skeptical of the ability to license advanced nuclear reactors and deploy them on a scale that would make a difference for climate change,” adds Fetter. “But I think it’s worth exploring because they’re a centralized form of carbon-free electricity and we don’t have a lot of those available.” At least in the US, it might be the only way nuclear power gets another chance. I think that's a fair assessment. It's probably not going to make a lot of difference but it is still interesting to explore and invest in. Regarding solar and battery, mass production capacity is basically the biggest hurdle here. Demand seems to be taking care of that (i.e. people are building so-called Giga factories to take care of this) but we're still an order of magnitude or two off to take care of most of our needs. Just the process of ramping up production is going to cut cost further. And of course at the current price levels, battery + solar is already highly competitive with just about everything else. Of course in the process of ramping up production, there are likely to also going to be massive technical improvements that will further drive down cost and performance. And just to pre-empt the argument: darkness is temporary and local, which means it is much less of a problem than some nuclear proponents seem to claim. Basically, if your panels don't provide enough power when it is cloudy, install more. If your battery runs out in the middle of the night, buy a bigger battery. If the area you live in is susceptible to extended periods of darkness (aka. the polar night), import power using cables. On the other hand, if, like most of the population of planet Earth, you live closer to the equator this is not going to be an issue. Nuclear is still going to be useful but just not as our primary source of electricity. The safety and securitt concerns alone would make this impractical. Even if we can deliver this technically and produce these things cost effectively, you'd still need a lot of security measures to prevent people from doing silly things like creating dirty bombs with the nasty stuff inside. Imagine a few tens of thousands of these things, it would be a nightmare from a security point of view.
- doikor 7y ago
  Darkness is temporary (in the sense of nights) only when close enough to equator. Here in Finland even as far south as you can go solar efficiency drops to almost nothing for a good 4 months a year. And in the north it goes to literally to nothing. And it isn’t very safe to rely on other counties for electricity over this period. Doing that basically hands the keys to freeze a sizable portion of our population to an external entity (government) Though even now we aren’t independent when it comes to heating over the winters. We have to import oil, gas and coal. But with those one can have strategic stockpiles to last over the next/current winter at least if things go bad. Kind of similar for nuclear fuel. We have stockpiles for years but don’t mine it here (we could but economically much cheaper to buy from Sweden and Russia). Just much easier to stockpile that stuff. But yeah for the vast majority of the whole planets population solar with batteries should work just fine.
StreamBright 7y ago
Nuclear power plants vs. solar+battery comparisons require one more dimension when compared: energy density. This will tell you how much weight and area is going to be allocated to cover the energy need of the customers you would like to cover (eg. for example a country).
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Energy density is largely irrelevant. What matters is cost, and in most of the world the energy density of solar does not cause a large increment to the cost. Land is mostly cheap.
  - jokoon 7y ago
    I often watch videos of Jean Marc Jancovici, a French consultant on energy. Cost is not really relevant to energy because the entire human civilization requires energy to function. Also, renewables can barely compete with nuclear, because they cannot deliver enough energy when you need it. Renewables also require more metals and mining, so they emit more. The coal and natural gas industry likes renewables because coal is on-demand energy.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      Nonsense. Cost is always relevant, since there is always a variety of ways to solve a problem, and cost is used to choose between them. This is true even of things that are vital, like energy. Cost must be properly accounted for, of course, including externalities.
      - jokoon 7y ago
        If you can accurately calculate the vast implications of the price of energy, I might listen to you. There are things where the price doesn't say a lot of things. It's true for energy since it's a very long term investment, which also has implications on infrastructure. Generally it's pretty complicated to evaluate the public interest, and I don't think you can put a price tag on public interest. It doesn't change the fact that nuclear is always better. It's just that private funding doesn't like it because it's a very long term investment.
kortilla 7y ago
> solar+battery in +5 years given current trends. Current trend is that solar+battery won’t be useful for a long time. Solar with current trends currently has no hope of replacing base-load because the storage options are terrible.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  Current trend is that solar + battery is already becoming standard at utility scale. Bids in the US west for solar are coming in with integrated battery storage at prices that new gas capacity cannot match.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    No, there are no solar+battery projects in the west (at least in the US), that are cost competitive with natural gas. If that were true it would be major news.
- ZeroGravitas 7y ago
  Arguing about what is best for baseload makes no sense. It's like comparing ICE vs battery electric vehicles on the basis of what's best for the non engine/motor parts, or "base-car". People need a whole car and a whole energy system. Coal and nuclear, which are suited to this artifical contstruct of baseload, are not good for providing 100% of energy requirements on their own or in partnership with others and that's why no one is building them anymore.
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Arguing for base-load is arguing for the whole energy system. The only way solar looks favorable is by ignoring base-load requirements, which is why it needs to be explicitly called out.
Veedrac 7y ago
> I'd love to see some numbers here because without them it's easy to assume this is not cost competitive with solar+battery in +5 years given current trends. [On nuclear fusion] “It's kind of as instructive to ask what's not the problem as it is to ask what is the problem. There is a problem. The problem is not cost. It's not that energy generation technologies are expensive. The cost is lower than it has ever been to generate electricity. It's also not intermittency, and there are a lot of studies out there looking at getting to very high penetration of renewables, and how you manage that grid with those intermittent sources, and the answers sort of range between, let's say, 60% penetration of renewables to 100% penetration. I can't argue about that, but fundamentally I think it is possible to manage that grid and, even more so, the cost of doing so is not prohibitive. [A consultancy called Systemic] added on the cost of intermittency, basically paid for with lithium ion batteries and gas peakers to deal with the hardest intermittencies to deal with—which is not when the sun goes in front of a cloud, but when it's summer or winter, that difference. So this isn't a carbon-neutral grid, it still has gas in it, but the total cost of intermittency adds about $15/MWh to the levelized cost. So you take solar, for example, from 35 to 50. Well, gas costs 80, so this doesn't change the picture. Solar and wind are still the cheapest sources of electricity. The problem, and this is where fusion fits, and this is where any new energy technology fits; the problem is scale. This is looking at the growth in deployment of solar and wind in a global sense. [...] This is the total sum of wind and solar based on current policies. We wanted the most aggressive scenario for the deployment of solar and wind, because we wanted to know the answer to the question: do we actually need fusion? So we took these curves, this is continued exponential growth. We did this last year; reality is already behind this model, because last year, 2018, growth in renewables flatlined for the first time. We assumed continual exponential growth. You add all of that up and you compare it to the total demand for electricity. [...] Renewables can get us to half the required electricity generation. A lot of the stories you see in news take that number and compare it to how much electricity we need now, but you know electric cars are coming, right?, electricity demand is going to increase. If we're going to get to net zero, whilst overall energy consumption might be falling, the demand for electricity is substantially rising because actually only about 20% of energy is electricity, so, you know, the energy in my car I drove here this morning was not electricity. That is what creates this clean power gap and this is why ultimately we need new technologies. We cannot get to the scale required to meet net zero by 2050 with the technologies that we currently have.” https://youtu.be/DtvcEkIb4D4?t=653 https://youtu.be/DtvcEkIb4D4?t=653
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
PaulHoule 7y ago
That is a space reactor. Send it to Mars or the 500AU solar gravitational lens area in the direction opposite Sagittarius A. Let it rot in place and don't worry that civilization falls, then 4000 years later the Mormons and the Scientologists are fighting for control of Yucca mountain from which they drill holes in search of Plutonium.

boomboomsubban 7y ago

I imagine you can find all sorts of numbers in their 12000 page report to the NRC, I assume located here https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/nuscale.html https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/design-cert/nuscal...

Animats 7y ago
Yes, and this is the main document to read.[1] There's some hand-waving on safety issues in Table 1.9-2. NuScale passes the buck on flooding issues to the plant owner. Also, there's some hand-waving on software safety issues: "The NuScale design applies RG 1.152, Revision 3 and IEEE Std. 7-4.3.2-2003 that it endorses. For RG 1.168, the requirements of IEEE 1012-2004 are tailored to the NuScale I&C development lifecycle, which is different from the conceptual waterfall lifecycle in IEEE 1012-2004. The applicable tasks from IEEE 1012-2004 to the I&C development are mapped. Some administrative mandatory requirements in the standard conflict with established Engineering or QA documentation requirements. The requirements of IEEE 1028-2008 are tailored to the NuScale I&C development lifecycle." This may mean "We use Agile and your outdated rules don't apply". The key concept is that, since these plants are passively cooled and don't require pumps for cooling, many of the concerns about keeping cooling water flowing to prevent a meltdown don't apply. "For the NuScale design, the safety analysis shows that core damage does not occur during any design basis event.", says the application. What could possibly go wrong? A big concern is that NuScale proposes to put up to 12 reactors in one connected pool. I haven't found the part yet where they discuss what happens if one leaks and contaminates the whole pool. Or the pool springs a leak and drains into the ground. These are not small plants. A 12-unit plant is 720MW of electrical power, so it's getting close to a typical gigawatt sized plant. More small units, instead of one big one. The history of power reactor meltdown incidents is roughly as follows: - Three Mile Island - meltdown, big containment vessel, fully contained, expensive but not hazardous. - Chernobyl - fire, meltdown, no containment vessel, radioactive material dispersed over large area. - Fukishima - meltdowns, undersized containment vessels breached, radioactive material dispersed over moderate sized area. A certain amount of skepticism about designs that "don't need" a big containment vessel is perhaps justified. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf
- xorfish 7y ago
  There are designs that don't need a large containment vessel because they operate at normal pressure and there is no water that might expand by a factpr of 1000. Look at the IMSR.
  - Animats 7y ago
    NuScale is a pressurized water reactor whose containment sits in a water-filled pit.
- andromeduck 7y ago
  Isn't the pool secondary containment so leaking into the pool is bad but not really any different than if primary containment failed for any other plant. You can find leaks in pools pretty easy by using a double lining and distributed sensors or in closed environments like this, by measuring net flows and looking out for any net change in volume.
  - baking 7y ago
    The pool is for passive secondary cooling if the primary fails. It is outside the containment and is intended to boil off over 30 days if there is a complete blackout. 30 days is all you need for the decay heat because after that air cooling is sufficient.
    - Animats 7y ago
      Not 30 days. 72 hours. "Water inventory in the reactor pool is adequate to cool the NPMs for at least 72 hours without adding water." NRC filing [1], page 41, bottom of page. A NuScale press release does say that. "The system is capable of providing 30 days of cooling without adding water to the pool."[2] The web site hype goes even further: "Should it become necessary, NuScale’s SMR shuts itself down and self-cools for an indefinite period of time, with no operator action required, no additional water, and no AC or DC power needed."[3] But that's not what the NRC filing says. Looks like they make bigger claims when they think they can get away with it. [1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1924/ML19241A398.pdf [2] https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/sites/nuscalepower.newshq.businesswire.com/files/doc_library/file/nuclear-exchange-sept-2011.pdf https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/sites/nuscalepower.newshq.... [3] https://www.nuscalepower.com/ https://www.nuscalepower.com/
mdorazio 7y ago
Thanks for this link. I've only read a few sections, but I can't find any cost info at all. Also they're not really saying anything about waste management that's useful. Summary: "The SRWS processes solid waste by dewatering, decontaminating, surveying, sorting, and classifying solid waste for storage and eventual shipment to licensed offsite facilities." (basically the same process with the same issues I have with "regular" nuclear plants). They do answer my water concerns, though - looks like no external cooling water is needed in normal operation, but their design is food susceptible so it needs to be built in places that cannot flood.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

The article includes an interesting note at the end: > “I am skeptical of the ability to license advanced nuclear reactors and deploy them on a scale that would make a difference for climate change,” adds Fetter. “But I think it’s worth exploring because they’re a centralized form of carbon-free electricity and we don’t have a lot of those available.” At least in the US, it might be the only way nuclear power gets another chance. I think that's a fair assessment. It's probably not going to make a lot of difference but it is still interesting to explore and invest in. Regarding solar and battery, mass production capacity is basically the biggest hurdle here. Demand seems to be taking care of that (i.e. people are building so-called Giga factories to take care of this) but we're still an order of magnitude or two off to take care of most of our needs. Just the process of ramping up production is going to cut cost further. And of course at the current price levels, battery + solar is already highly competitive with just about everything else. Of course in the process of ramping up production, there are likely to also going to be massive technical improvements that will further drive down cost and performance. And just to pre-empt the argument: darkness is temporary and local, which means it is much less of a problem than some nuclear proponents seem to claim. Basically, if your panels don't provide enough power when it is cloudy, install more. If your battery runs out in the middle of the night, buy a bigger battery. If the area you live in is susceptible to extended periods of darkness (aka. the polar night), import power using cables. On the other hand, if, like most of the population of planet Earth, you live closer to the equator this is not going to be an issue. Nuclear is still going to be useful but just not as our primary source of electricity. The safety and securitt concerns alone would make this impractical. Even if we can deliver this technically and produce these things cost effectively, you'd still need a lot of security measures to prevent people from doing silly things like creating dirty bombs with the nasty stuff inside. Imagine a few tens of thousands of these things, it would be a nightmare from a security point of view.

doikor 7y ago
Darkness is temporary (in the sense of nights) only when close enough to equator. Here in Finland even as far south as you can go solar efficiency drops to almost nothing for a good 4 months a year. And in the north it goes to literally to nothing. And it isn’t very safe to rely on other counties for electricity over this period. Doing that basically hands the keys to freeze a sizable portion of our population to an external entity (government) Though even now we aren’t independent when it comes to heating over the winters. We have to import oil, gas and coal. But with those one can have strategic stockpiles to last over the next/current winter at least if things go bad. Kind of similar for nuclear fuel. We have stockpiles for years but don’t mine it here (we could but economically much cheaper to buy from Sweden and Russia). Just much easier to stockpile that stuff. But yeah for the vast majority of the whole planets population solar with batteries should work just fine.

StreamBright 7y ago

Nuclear power plants vs. solar+battery comparisons require one more dimension when compared: energy density. This will tell you how much weight and area is going to be allocated to cover the energy need of the customers you would like to cover (eg. for example a country).

pfdietz 7y ago
Energy density is largely irrelevant. What matters is cost, and in most of the world the energy density of solar does not cause a large increment to the cost. Land is mostly cheap.
- jokoon 7y ago
  I often watch videos of Jean Marc Jancovici, a French consultant on energy. Cost is not really relevant to energy because the entire human civilization requires energy to function. Also, renewables can barely compete with nuclear, because they cannot deliver enough energy when you need it. Renewables also require more metals and mining, so they emit more. The coal and natural gas industry likes renewables because coal is on-demand energy.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    Nonsense. Cost is always relevant, since there is always a variety of ways to solve a problem, and cost is used to choose between them. This is true even of things that are vital, like energy. Cost must be properly accounted for, of course, including externalities.
    - jokoon 7y ago
      If you can accurately calculate the vast implications of the price of energy, I might listen to you. There are things where the price doesn't say a lot of things. It's true for energy since it's a very long term investment, which also has implications on infrastructure. Generally it's pretty complicated to evaluate the public interest, and I don't think you can put a price tag on public interest. It doesn't change the fact that nuclear is always better. It's just that private funding doesn't like it because it's a very long term investment.

kortilla 7y ago

> solar+battery in +5 years given current trends. Current trend is that solar+battery won’t be useful for a long time. Solar with current trends currently has no hope of replacing base-load because the storage options are terrible.

pfdietz 7y ago
Current trend is that solar + battery is already becoming standard at utility scale. Bids in the US west for solar are coming in with integrated battery storage at prices that new gas capacity cannot match.
- kortilla 7y ago
  No, there are no solar+battery projects in the west (at least in the US), that are cost competitive with natural gas. If that were true it would be major news.
ZeroGravitas 7y ago
Arguing about what is best for baseload makes no sense. It's like comparing ICE vs battery electric vehicles on the basis of what's best for the non engine/motor parts, or "base-car". People need a whole car and a whole energy system. Coal and nuclear, which are suited to this artifical contstruct of baseload, are not good for providing 100% of energy requirements on their own or in partnership with others and that's why no one is building them anymore.
- kortilla 7y ago
  Arguing for base-load is arguing for the whole energy system. The only way solar looks favorable is by ignoring base-load requirements, which is why it needs to be explicitly called out.

Veedrac 7y ago

> I'd love to see some numbers here because without them it's easy to assume this is not cost competitive with solar+battery in +5 years given current trends. [On nuclear fusion] “It's kind of as instructive to ask what's not the problem as it is to ask what is the problem. There is a problem. The problem is not cost. It's not that energy generation technologies are expensive. The cost is lower than it has ever been to generate electricity. It's also not intermittency, and there are a lot of studies out there looking at getting to very high penetration of renewables, and how you manage that grid with those intermittent sources, and the answers sort of range between, let's say, 60% penetration of renewables to 100% penetration. I can't argue about that, but fundamentally I think it is possible to manage that grid and, even more so, the cost of doing so is not prohibitive. [A consultancy called Systemic] added on the cost of intermittency, basically paid for with lithium ion batteries and gas peakers to deal with the hardest intermittencies to deal with—which is not when the sun goes in front of a cloud, but when it's summer or winter, that difference. So this isn't a carbon-neutral grid, it still has gas in it, but the total cost of intermittency adds about $15/MWh to the levelized cost. So you take solar, for example, from 35 to 50. Well, gas costs 80, so this doesn't change the picture. Solar and wind are still the cheapest sources of electricity. The problem, and this is where fusion fits, and this is where any new energy technology fits; the problem is scale. This is looking at the growth in deployment of solar and wind in a global sense. [...] This is the total sum of wind and solar based on current policies. We wanted the most aggressive scenario for the deployment of solar and wind, because we wanted to know the answer to the question: do we actually need fusion? So we took these curves, this is continued exponential growth. We did this last year; reality is already behind this model, because last year, 2018, growth in renewables flatlined for the first time. We assumed continual exponential growth. You add all of that up and you compare it to the total demand for electricity. [...] Renewables can get us to half the required electricity generation. A lot of the stories you see in news take that number and compare it to how much electricity we need now, but you know electric cars are coming, right?, electricity demand is going to increase. If we're going to get to net zero, whilst overall energy consumption might be falling, the demand for electricity is substantially rising because actually only about 20% of energy is electricity, so, you know, the energy in my car I drove here this morning was not electricity. That is what creates this clean power gap and this is why ultimately we need new technologies. We cannot get to the scale required to meet net zero by 2050 with the technologies that we currently have.” https://youtu.be/DtvcEkIb4D4?t=653 https://youtu.be/DtvcEkIb4D4?t=653

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

PaulHoule 7y ago

That is a space reactor. Send it to Mars or the 500AU solar gravitational lens area in the direction opposite Sagittarius A. Let it rot in place and don't worry that civilization falls, then 4000 years later the Mormons and the Scientologists are fighting for control of Yucca mountain from which they drill holes in search of Plutonium.