7 ms·

Where is the Elon Musk of Nuclear Reactors? Where are the robotic assembly lines that crank out highly modular, efficient, miniature "assemble-yourself" nuclea

Where is the Elon Musk of Nuclear Reactors? Where are the robotic assembly lines that crank out highly modular, efficient, miniature "assemble-yourself" nuclear power plants that any construction team could snap together and seat into a preformed foundation in 48 hours? Why doesn't this exist yet? I'm talking on the scale of 1 reactor to 1 neighborhood or 1 large business. Perhaps geothermal cooling.

whimsicalism 6y ago
NIMBYism, safety, and non-proliferation concerns.
- echelon 6y ago
  > non-proliferation concerns We're already entering into runaway proliferation. Pakistan and India are our allies, but I don't see them keeping a stranglehold on the tech. Iran will have them. The Saudis will probably have them soon. If a dysfunctional nation like North Korea can have nukes, what's stopping the rest of the world? We're not even preventing ICBM capability from spreading! What gives? This is way more of a nightmare scenario than climate change and nobody is batting an eye.
  - baq 6y ago
    > This is way more of a nightmare scenario than climate change and nobody is batting an eye. there is a probability that an irrational leader orders a nuclear attack and somebody executes it instead of deserting. climate change is a certainty at this point and the only question is how bad will it be. for people living by the sea and in the parts of the tropics displacement in a single lifetime is next to certain.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    The tech is 75 years old. One suspects a sufficiently-funded team of recent PhDs could build the entire infrastructure from scratch in less than a decade. The methods we've attempted to stem proliferation haven't worked. Trying them again, except harder this time, won't work either. We all know this, but few of us have the imagination to consider other options.
- Der_Einzige 6y ago
  Thorium msr reactors almost solves the last two problems...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hannob 6y ago
It does exist. But it uses nuclear fusion instead of fission. There's a big nuclear fusion plant at the center of our universe. It's called the "sun". It spreads out its energy for free. There are highly modular energy collectors you can buy that make use of that energy and they're getting cheaper at amazing rates.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  You still need base load, ie. an option that can displace natgas in the way that natgas displaced coal. There's a reason why even though solar is now cheaper than coal it didn't displace it like natgas has.
  - pydry 6y ago
    The reason is more about capex, the financial necessity of aging out existing plants and the time it takes to shift from one dominant source of power generation to another. It wouldn't have been possible to shift to nuclear power overnight either. Since natgas is 100% dispatchable and is 35% of power generation in the US it's not like nuclear's 20% is really contributing that much stability to the grid right now and natgas can be gradually dialed down as solar/wind/variability tech is dialed up.
    - whimsicalism 6y ago
      > the financial necessity of aging out existing plants and the time it takes to shift from one dominant source of power generation to another. Yes... but we just undertook the capex to do this with coal -> natgas in the last decade or so. So the barrier is not just the financial cost of overhauling.
      - pydry 6y ago
        and in the last 5 years we went from about 5% to 18% renewables. The renewables industry in the US wasn't given any special dispensation so it had to compete pretty much without subsidy with natgas and coal which it could only really start to do about 5 years ago (it's cost competitive with coal only this year). In fact, arguably the US subsidies oil and gas more than renewables. Nuclear would require massive subsidies to grow beyond 20%. Renewables won't.
quanticle 6y ago
How many Falcon 9s did SpaceX blow up before they got a successful launch? Are you willing to have that many meltdowns in order to get your "highly modular, efficient, miniature 'assemble-yourself' nuclear power plants"? Even if you are, how are you going to convince people that it's worth it? What are you going to say when the press tars your project with the headline, "A Fukushima In Your Backyard?"
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Yeah people suck at critical reasoning.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Falcon 9 had been an amazing success, which kind of defeats your point. Of course you need to perfect the technology (or close to it) before you deploy it. People are easily defeated by repetition. To paraphrase, if you have one reactor and it fails, it's a news story. If you have one million reactors and one fails, it's a statistic.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  Yes. Build the first ones in a desert. Do chaos testing, stress testing and over-engineer each component and the whole system so that any teenager can install and operate it. I'm not kidding. Make it "teen certified".
  - cratermoon 6y ago
    > Build the first ones in a desert Leaving aside the fact the deserts are essential biomes on their own and shouldn't be treated as garbage dumps, didn't Fukishima and Chernobyl teach us that putting nuclear power plants "way over there away from anything" doesn't really matter in the case of a serious accident?
    - manfredo 6y ago
      Well, we've already got a tract of desert that's been heavily irradiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site
briffle 6y ago
NuScale power just got approval a month or two ago, and is working on their small (50MW reactors)
- CogentHedgehog 6y ago
  NuScale just lost a bunch of their backers for their project after announcing several years of delays and cost overruns. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-utilities-back-out-deal-build-novel-nuclear-power-plant https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-utilities... > announced that completion of the project would be delayed by 3 years to 2030. It also estimates the cost would climb from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion. Unfortunately this is a very old story with the nuclear industry: they consistently over-promise and under-deliver. The closer projects get to completion, the more costs grow and the further the completion date gets pushed out. This has been true of most of the recent builds in the US and Europe. The tech is fine, but there seems to be something wrong with the industry.
- epistasis 6y ago
  And they can't find customers. Their target price, of $55/MWh, would probably be acceptable if delivered today. But when you look at hybrid solar/battery projects, we are already getting close to $55/MWh for fully dispatchable energy, that doesn't have to be run 24x7 like nuclear but actually matches the load curve of the grid. Seriously, there are battery projects being deployed now, attached to solar, with a storage cost of $80/MWh, and energy cost of $20/MWh. Since overnight demand is small compared to daytime, only about half of the energy needs to be stored. That averages out to $60/MWh, today. In 5 years it will be something like $40-$50. In 10 years, when NuScale deploys, the cost of solar+storage will be $30-40/MWh. And it might even get cheaper. NuScale may be useful for polar locations without much wind, but I don't foresee them having a huge addressable market.
darkerside 6y ago
Sure there are reasons this is a bad idea, but there are certainly reasons it's a good one. It seems like building large plants the way we typically do backloads tons of risk. And it's not really working. How does the risk of nuclear meltdown scale down with size? Both in terms of likelihood and how catastrophic?
happycube 6y ago
The actual Elon Musk is building large battery farms, which have ROI measured in single-digit years. In Hollywood terms, solar/wind/battery plants are now bankable. I don't know who in their right mind would underwrite a nuclear plant now.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  I suppose it would be useful in a space ship, or in sea vessels smaller than current nuclear subs.
zamalek 6y ago
> Where is the Elon Musk of Nuclear Reactors? They are doing fusion. Don't get me wrong, I have been pro-fission for a very long time (as it could get us out of this fossil fuel pit faster than any other option, even if we plan to replace it in the future). It has a very bad name because of bad green peace pseudo-science, fusion has better PR.

whimsicalism 6y ago

NIMBYism, safety, and non-proliferation concerns.

echelon 6y ago
> non-proliferation concerns We're already entering into runaway proliferation. Pakistan and India are our allies, but I don't see them keeping a stranglehold on the tech. Iran will have them. The Saudis will probably have them soon. If a dysfunctional nation like North Korea can have nukes, what's stopping the rest of the world? We're not even preventing ICBM capability from spreading! What gives? This is way more of a nightmare scenario than climate change and nobody is batting an eye.
- baq 6y ago
  > This is way more of a nightmare scenario than climate change and nobody is batting an eye. there is a probability that an irrational leader orders a nuclear attack and somebody executes it instead of deserting. climate change is a certainty at this point and the only question is how bad will it be. for people living by the sea and in the parts of the tropics displacement in a single lifetime is next to certain.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  The tech is 75 years old. One suspects a sufficiently-funded team of recent PhDs could build the entire infrastructure from scratch in less than a decade. The methods we've attempted to stem proliferation haven't worked. Trying them again, except harder this time, won't work either. We all know this, but few of us have the imagination to consider other options.
Der_Einzige 6y ago
Thorium msr reactors almost solves the last two problems...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hannob 6y ago

It does exist. But it uses nuclear fusion instead of fission. There's a big nuclear fusion plant at the center of our universe. It's called the "sun". It spreads out its energy for free. There are highly modular energy collectors you can buy that make use of that energy and they're getting cheaper at amazing rates.

whimsicalism 6y ago
You still need base load, ie. an option that can displace natgas in the way that natgas displaced coal. There's a reason why even though solar is now cheaper than coal it didn't displace it like natgas has.
- pydry 6y ago
  The reason is more about capex, the financial necessity of aging out existing plants and the time it takes to shift from one dominant source of power generation to another. It wouldn't have been possible to shift to nuclear power overnight either. Since natgas is 100% dispatchable and is 35% of power generation in the US it's not like nuclear's 20% is really contributing that much stability to the grid right now and natgas can be gradually dialed down as solar/wind/variability tech is dialed up.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > the financial necessity of aging out existing plants and the time it takes to shift from one dominant source of power generation to another. Yes... but we just undertook the capex to do this with coal -> natgas in the last decade or so. So the barrier is not just the financial cost of overhauling.
    - pydry 6y ago
      and in the last 5 years we went from about 5% to 18% renewables. The renewables industry in the US wasn't given any special dispensation so it had to compete pretty much without subsidy with natgas and coal which it could only really start to do about 5 years ago (it's cost competitive with coal only this year). In fact, arguably the US subsidies oil and gas more than renewables. Nuclear would require massive subsidies to grow beyond 20%. Renewables won't.

quanticle 6y ago

How many Falcon 9s did SpaceX blow up before they got a successful launch? Are you willing to have that many meltdowns in order to get your "highly modular, efficient, miniature 'assemble-yourself' nuclear power plants"? Even if you are, how are you going to convince people that it's worth it? What are you going to say when the press tars your project with the headline, "A Fukushima In Your Backyard?"

whimsicalism 6y ago
Yeah people suck at critical reasoning.
darkerside 6y ago
Falcon 9 had been an amazing success, which kind of defeats your point. Of course you need to perfect the technology (or close to it) before you deploy it. People are easily defeated by repetition. To paraphrase, if you have one reactor and it fails, it's a news story. If you have one million reactors and one fails, it's a statistic.
LinuxBender 6y ago
Yes. Build the first ones in a desert. Do chaos testing, stress testing and over-engineer each component and the whole system so that any teenager can install and operate it. I'm not kidding. Make it "teen certified".
- cratermoon 6y ago
  > Build the first ones in a desert Leaving aside the fact the deserts are essential biomes on their own and shouldn't be treated as garbage dumps, didn't Fukishima and Chernobyl teach us that putting nuclear power plants "way over there away from anything" doesn't really matter in the case of a serious accident?
  - manfredo 6y ago
    Well, we've already got a tract of desert that's been heavily irradiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_Site

briffle 6y ago

NuScale power just got approval a month or two ago, and is working on their small (50MW reactors)

CogentHedgehog 6y ago
NuScale just lost a bunch of their backers for their project after announcing several years of delays and cost overruns. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-utilities-back-out-deal-build-novel-nuclear-power-plant https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-utilities... > announced that completion of the project would be delayed by 3 years to 2030. It also estimates the cost would climb from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion. Unfortunately this is a very old story with the nuclear industry: they consistently over-promise and under-deliver. The closer projects get to completion, the more costs grow and the further the completion date gets pushed out. This has been true of most of the recent builds in the US and Europe. The tech is fine, but there seems to be something wrong with the industry.
epistasis 6y ago
And they can't find customers. Their target price, of $55/MWh, would probably be acceptable if delivered today. But when you look at hybrid solar/battery projects, we are already getting close to $55/MWh for fully dispatchable energy, that doesn't have to be run 24x7 like nuclear but actually matches the load curve of the grid. Seriously, there are battery projects being deployed now, attached to solar, with a storage cost of $80/MWh, and energy cost of $20/MWh. Since overnight demand is small compared to daytime, only about half of the energy needs to be stored. That averages out to $60/MWh, today. In 5 years it will be something like $40-$50. In 10 years, when NuScale deploys, the cost of solar+storage will be $30-40/MWh. And it might even get cheaper. NuScale may be useful for polar locations without much wind, but I don't foresee them having a huge addressable market.

darkerside 6y ago

Sure there are reasons this is a bad idea, but there are certainly reasons it's a good one. It seems like building large plants the way we typically do backloads tons of risk. And it's not really working. How does the risk of nuclear meltdown scale down with size? Both in terms of likelihood and how catastrophic?

happycube 6y ago

The actual Elon Musk is building large battery farms, which have ROI measured in single-digit years. In Hollywood terms, solar/wind/battery plants are now bankable. I don't know who in their right mind would underwrite a nuclear plant now.

LinuxBender 6y ago
I suppose it would be useful in a space ship, or in sea vessels smaller than current nuclear subs.

zamalek 6y ago

> Where is the Elon Musk of Nuclear Reactors? They are doing fusion. Don't get me wrong, I have been pro-fission for a very long time (as it could get us out of this fossil fuel pit faster than any other option, even if we plan to replace it in the future). It has a very bad name because of bad green peace pseudo-science, fusion has better PR.