6 ms·

This is huge. Not only are micro reactors far more economical, it dramatically reduces the need to maintain a massive nationwide grid and provides flexibility

by EricE 6y ago

This is huge. Not only are micro reactors far more economical, it dramatically reduces the need to maintain a massive nationwide grid and provides flexibility to people in remote areas including greater autonomy. Efficiency should be greater without massive transmission line losses. Might start fewer fires in California too.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
The economics are yet to be borne out. I believe the NuScale cost (feel free to correct me if this information is wrong) is still above the cost of renewables and storage [1] but below that of traditional PWRs (684Mw @ $3 billion [2], ~25 cents/kwh [3]), which is competitive in places like Hawaii (which is still relying heavily on diesel fuel for what solar isn't providing) and geographies with limited land or renewables potential, but not elsewhere (storage aside, you're still competing with renewables around 1-3 cents/kwh at utility scale). Congrats to NuScale for making it through to the other side of US nuclear regulatory purgatory. Optimism is warranted ("all of the above" to replace fossil fuels), but cautious optimism. It's not real until a commercial reactor is generating. Vogtle is still not done [4]. I hope I get to see a factory churning out prefab reactors ready for shipment. EDITs (to not pollute thread with replies): A carbon tax in the US is very unlikely, and you cannot count on economies of scale until you have arrived at scale. [1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 [2] https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24346808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24346808 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24061448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24061448
- donor20 6y ago
  I think it also depends on CO2 charges if any. For example, right now we have a pretty serious externality with CO2 for coal and other sources, what are the costs that folks would assign to CO2 to clear to needed target? That could bring comparative cost (with CO2 impact) down a bit.
- rubber_duck 6y ago
  Thing is this kind of design benefits massively from economies of scale, same kind of thing that has drawn the price of PV down and other green energy.
  - nickik 6y ago
    This kind of design actually starts out with losing massive economics of scale of traditional PWR and hopes to get it back by economics of scale in manufacturing. I don't think NuScale will have much trouble competing with traditional PWR, but if they can compete in the overall market is a huge question.
  - epistasis 6y ago
    Up until recently the "economy of scale" meant massive reactors when it came to nuclear, and small modular reactors were abandoned because people didn't think they could be economical. We have radically different construction skill sets now than we did in the 1970s, so the economics may be different now, and it could have been that the planners were wrong before. But I'm any case, until a few of these have shipped, I'm not sure we'll know the true cost. These are manufactured like airplanes, a few at a time. Whereas solar has massive plants with hundreds of thousands of the same part assembled and shipped. I'm hopeful that they will provide another tool in the fight against climate change, but not super optimistic. There are many many technologies that are at a similar stage of development that could be used instead, such as cheap hydrogen electrolyzers, long-duration storage flow batteries, etc. And if these other techs succeed, they will also help SMR nuclear, assuming SMR nuclear can compete with renewables on cost!
    - theptip 6y ago
      Given the general cost disease affecting large construction projects, I think that massive reactors are an unviable proposition in western countries at this point. While the reactor core designs seem to be templatized, the projects to build them are not, and so there is huge inefficiency. E.g. see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-project-canceled-in-south-carolina.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-pro.... If NuScale can build hundreds or thousands of these small reactors, they should be able to perfect a turnkey installation playbook that would hopefully reduce costs significantly, and perhaps more importantly, reduce variance on project spend/timelines. I think an unpredictable total cost of ownership is one of the things hurting nuclear projects. The big question in my mind is whether they can deploy enough of these to get to that scale, given that there's a fairly universal NIMBYism against nuclear power, even where this would be displacing CO2-emitting sources.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  It kills me that people keep not factoring in long term damage to the earth when they figure out how much energy costs.
fuckyah 6y ago
What happens if this blows up? (Terrorist bombing, etc)
adrianmonk 6y ago
I'm not an expert, but I'm not convinced about it reducing the need to maintain a nationwide grid. Nuclear reactors take ages to ramp up and down. It's basically going to be generating the same amount of power 24x7, but demand is going to fluctuate. The more other areas you're connected to, the more opportunity there is to send that power to someone who can use it. Obviously there's a law of diminishing returns at some point, so maybe the grid doesn't need to be as large as possible. There are alternatives like energy storage (batteries, etc.), but you'd have to compare all the costs and benefits.
- m463 6y ago
  I can see that if these are distributed, the grid can be more of a mesh than spokes on a wheel. solar can do the same sort of thing.
- liability 6y ago
  > Nuclear reactors take ages to ramp up and down. Naval reactors are apparently very fast in this regard, so it's evidently not an inherent property of nuclear power. (The USN also has an unparalleled record of safely operating reactors; more that 5,000 reactor-years clocked without major incident.)
  - trimbo 6y ago
    Does it count that a Navy man was killed at SL-1? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67718734/richard-carlton-legg https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67718734/richard-carlton...
    - liability 6y ago
      SL-1 was an Army reactor, so I would say it doesn't count. I'd also not count the USS Thresher or the USS Scorpion, since reactor accidents weren't the reason those sank.
    - stjohnswarts 6y ago
      Relative to how many people die every year from wood and coal smoke? I would say it doesn't count in a relative sense.
baybal2 6y ago
> This is huge. Not only are micro reactors far more economical No, they aren't. They are more expensive per unit of power produced, by far bigger than any other powerplant in practical use. The only way I see nuclear getting economical is it getting bigger. Nuclear's biggest advantage after the cost of fuel is its huuuuuuge power density, and power scalability. With currently technology level, it's possible to generate multiple gigawatts from a single reactor. > it dramatically reduces the need to maintain a massive nationwide grid It would not. Grid maintenance are quite non-linear, and high voltage lines are actually much cheaper per unit of electricity transferred than residential links. Very high voltage DC transfer is very economical, efficient enough for intercontinental connections, but very expensive.
- kortex 6y ago
  Bigger means bespoke. More NRE, more paperwork, more one-offs. Smaller means the entire supply chain is simpler and easier. Management is easier. And of course, the more times you do something, the easier and cheaper it gets. Mass production is a no-brainer.
  - jhayward 6y ago
    > Mass production is a no-brainer. This is very much an unproven assumption. There is nothing in the history of nuclear technology to suggest that what most industries experience, an industrial learning curve that lowers production cost, will be found for these reactors. In fact, just the opposite - the more experience we get with them the more likely we are to find problems that are very expensive to fix. This is even more true now that they've given up on doing serial production in a single factory.
7952 6y ago
I doubt it will reduce the need for a grid much. The most efficient way to deploy these is probably in clusters next to an existing big substation on an EHV line. The local substations are likely to be increasingly constrained by solar and wind that have to be distributed. Nuclear has no such requirement so why bother with hundreds of sites when you just need a few bigger ones?
pfdietz 6y ago
> Not only are micro reactors far more economical Experience to date has been the opposite. They have diseconomies of scale in construction and operation. The proponents claim they will make up for this somehow, for example by making the reactors in factories, but note that NuScale has given up on that and is going to have the parts fabricated by others and assembled on site, just like larger reactors.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Source for that plan B? Curious what they are telling their investors, then.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    "In answer to a question I posed to Nuscale at the town hall we have learned that the plan to save costs by fabricating the modules at a remote factory and shipping them to the Idaho site has been abandoned. The artful response to my question said that Nuscale engaged with approximately 40 … pressure vessel fabricators worldwide and … determined that Nuscale will use existing factories … in lieu of building its own factory. The major module subcomponents will be manufactured at multiple manufacturer locations and shipped to a single location for assembly prior to installing into the facility.” This signifies the failure of one of the major cost-saving features of the Nuscale project, which was to forestall this exact scenario." https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluor-nuscale-small-modular-reactor-project/ https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluo...
    - Ericson2314 6y ago
      Thanks. I'm guessing that official line, accurate or not, is future larger deployments may be constructed differently, and this reneging is just for the initial run.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
A small town could probably use one of these, however I don't think farmer Joe and 3 or 4 of his neighbors are going to be able to afford one of these to keep the electric smokers going for thanksgiving...

by EricE 6y ago

toomuchtodo 6y ago

The economics are yet to be borne out. I believe the NuScale cost (feel free to correct me if this information is wrong) is still above the cost of renewables and storage [1] but below that of traditional PWRs (684Mw @ $3 billion [2], ~25 cents/kwh [3]), which is competitive in places like Hawaii (which is still relying heavily on diesel fuel for what solar isn't providing) and geographies with limited land or renewables potential, but not elsewhere (storage aside, you're still competing with renewables around 1-3 cents/kwh at utility scale). Congrats to NuScale for making it through to the other side of US nuclear regulatory purgatory. Optimism is warranted ("all of the above" to replace fossil fuels), but cautious optimism. It's not real until a commercial reactor is generating. Vogtle is still not done [4]. I hope I get to see a factory churning out prefab reactors ready for shipment. EDITs (to not pollute thread with replies): A carbon tax in the US is very unlikely, and you cannot count on economies of scale until you have arrived at scale. [1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 [2] https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24346808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24346808 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24061448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24061448

donor20 6y ago
I think it also depends on CO2 charges if any. For example, right now we have a pretty serious externality with CO2 for coal and other sources, what are the costs that folks would assign to CO2 to clear to needed target? That could bring comparative cost (with CO2 impact) down a bit.
rubber_duck 6y ago
Thing is this kind of design benefits massively from economies of scale, same kind of thing that has drawn the price of PV down and other green energy.
- nickik 6y ago
  This kind of design actually starts out with losing massive economics of scale of traditional PWR and hopes to get it back by economics of scale in manufacturing. I don't think NuScale will have much trouble competing with traditional PWR, but if they can compete in the overall market is a huge question.
- epistasis 6y ago
  Up until recently the "economy of scale" meant massive reactors when it came to nuclear, and small modular reactors were abandoned because people didn't think they could be economical. We have radically different construction skill sets now than we did in the 1970s, so the economics may be different now, and it could have been that the planners were wrong before. But I'm any case, until a few of these have shipped, I'm not sure we'll know the true cost. These are manufactured like airplanes, a few at a time. Whereas solar has massive plants with hundreds of thousands of the same part assembled and shipped. I'm hopeful that they will provide another tool in the fight against climate change, but not super optimistic. There are many many technologies that are at a similar stage of development that could be used instead, such as cheap hydrogen electrolyzers, long-duration storage flow batteries, etc. And if these other techs succeed, they will also help SMR nuclear, assuming SMR nuclear can compete with renewables on cost!
  - theptip 6y ago
    Given the general cost disease affecting large construction projects, I think that massive reactors are an unviable proposition in western countries at this point. While the reactor core designs seem to be templatized, the projects to build them are not, and so there is huge inefficiency. E.g. see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-project-canceled-in-south-carolina.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/climate/nuclear-power-pro.... If NuScale can build hundreds or thousands of these small reactors, they should be able to perfect a turnkey installation playbook that would hopefully reduce costs significantly, and perhaps more importantly, reduce variance on project spend/timelines. I think an unpredictable total cost of ownership is one of the things hurting nuclear projects. The big question in my mind is whether they can deploy enough of these to get to that scale, given that there's a fairly universal NIMBYism against nuclear power, even where this would be displacing CO2-emitting sources.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
It kills me that people keep not factoring in long term damage to the earth when they figure out how much energy costs.

fuckyah 6y ago

What happens if this blows up? (Terrorist bombing, etc)

adrianmonk 6y ago

I'm not an expert, but I'm not convinced about it reducing the need to maintain a nationwide grid. Nuclear reactors take ages to ramp up and down. It's basically going to be generating the same amount of power 24x7, but demand is going to fluctuate. The more other areas you're connected to, the more opportunity there is to send that power to someone who can use it. Obviously there's a law of diminishing returns at some point, so maybe the grid doesn't need to be as large as possible. There are alternatives like energy storage (batteries, etc.), but you'd have to compare all the costs and benefits.

m463 6y ago
I can see that if these are distributed, the grid can be more of a mesh than spokes on a wheel. solar can do the same sort of thing.
liability 6y ago
> Nuclear reactors take ages to ramp up and down. Naval reactors are apparently very fast in this regard, so it's evidently not an inherent property of nuclear power. (The USN also has an unparalleled record of safely operating reactors; more that 5,000 reactor-years clocked without major incident.)
- trimbo 6y ago
  Does it count that a Navy man was killed at SL-1? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67718734/richard-carlton-legg https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/67718734/richard-carlton...
  - liability 6y ago
    SL-1 was an Army reactor, so I would say it doesn't count. I'd also not count the USS Thresher or the USS Scorpion, since reactor accidents weren't the reason those sank.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Relative to how many people die every year from wood and coal smoke? I would say it doesn't count in a relative sense.

baybal2 6y ago

> This is huge. Not only are micro reactors far more economical No, they aren't. They are more expensive per unit of power produced, by far bigger than any other powerplant in practical use. The only way I see nuclear getting economical is it getting bigger. Nuclear's biggest advantage after the cost of fuel is its huuuuuuge power density, and power scalability. With currently technology level, it's possible to generate multiple gigawatts from a single reactor. > it dramatically reduces the need to maintain a massive nationwide grid It would not. Grid maintenance are quite non-linear, and high voltage lines are actually much cheaper per unit of electricity transferred than residential links. Very high voltage DC transfer is very economical, efficient enough for intercontinental connections, but very expensive.

kortex 6y ago
Bigger means bespoke. More NRE, more paperwork, more one-offs. Smaller means the entire supply chain is simpler and easier. Management is easier. And of course, the more times you do something, the easier and cheaper it gets. Mass production is a no-brainer.
- jhayward 6y ago
  > Mass production is a no-brainer. This is very much an unproven assumption. There is nothing in the history of nuclear technology to suggest that what most industries experience, an industrial learning curve that lowers production cost, will be found for these reactors. In fact, just the opposite - the more experience we get with them the more likely we are to find problems that are very expensive to fix. This is even more true now that they've given up on doing serial production in a single factory.

7952 6y ago

I doubt it will reduce the need for a grid much. The most efficient way to deploy these is probably in clusters next to an existing big substation on an EHV line. The local substations are likely to be increasingly constrained by solar and wind that have to be distributed. Nuclear has no such requirement so why bother with hundreds of sites when you just need a few bigger ones?

pfdietz 6y ago

> Not only are micro reactors far more economical Experience to date has been the opposite. They have diseconomies of scale in construction and operation. The proponents claim they will make up for this somehow, for example by making the reactors in factories, but note that NuScale has given up on that and is going to have the parts fabricated by others and assembled on site, just like larger reactors.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Source for that plan B? Curious what they are telling their investors, then.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  "In answer to a question I posed to Nuscale at the town hall we have learned that the plan to save costs by fabricating the modules at a remote factory and shipping them to the Idaho site has been abandoned. The artful response to my question said that Nuscale engaged with approximately 40 … pressure vessel fabricators worldwide and … determined that Nuscale will use existing factories … in lieu of building its own factory. The major module subcomponents will be manufactured at multiple manufacturer locations and shipped to a single location for assembly prior to installing into the facility.” This signifies the failure of one of the major cost-saving features of the Nuscale project, which was to forestall this exact scenario." https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluor-nuscale-small-modular-reactor-project/ https://losalamosreporter.com/2020/08/22/get-out-of-the-fluo...
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    Thanks. I'm guessing that official line, accurate or not, is future larger deployments may be constructed differently, and this reneging is just for the initial run.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

A small town could probably use one of these, however I don't think farmer Joe and 3 or 4 of his neighbors are going to be able to afford one of these to keep the electric smokers going for thanksgiving...