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Small modular nuclear reactors may help polluting industries reduce emissions
- toomuchtodo 6y agoThis and heating districts with any power provided as an extra benefit are far better use cases for this technology than trying to compete with renewables, batteries, hydro, and transmission, most especially in markets where they absolutely need the heat but are also attempting to avoid CO2 emissions to obtain said heat.
- tomatotomato37 6y agoI agree. Nuclear is one of our cleanest and most advanced methods of producing heat/steam, but the tech for creating power from said heat/steam is lagging behind the more direct methods seen in newer technologies. In my opinion this is why concentrated solar & geothermal also lag behind their more conventional renewable cousins.
- rich_sasha 6y agoI'm mildly pro nuclear, but even then I'm not sure I'd have one of those near people. Minor incidents happen frequently, but they would be so much severe, or at least scary, if there's thousands of people within a mile of the device.
- gwbennett 6y agoThe U.S. Navy nuclear program has developed 27 different plant designs, installed them in 210 nuclear-powered ships, taken 500 reactor cores into operation, and accumulated over 5,400 reactor years of operation and 128,000,000 miles safely steamed. (source Wikipedia) Many of these have operated in and around the most densely populated ports and cities in the world. I helped operate 3 of them. No issues.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoThe US Navy should build and operate commercial reactors as a revenue generator.
- gwbennett 6y agoOne of the keys to the US Navy's success is standardization of reactor design, components and training. A sailor can go from one sub to the next and find the reactor plant nearly identical in operation and design as the other within the same class of ship. Nearly every commercial plant is different in design and components. Imagine if every company you worked for designed, built their own operating system and computers.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoYes, exactly. Have the Navy design, deploy, and operate reactors for that very reason. They've already done it, instead of startups attempting to start from zero. Even if you don't generate a profit, or operate at a reasonable loss, you're projecting soft power a la China's Belt and Road while providing humanitarian and environmental benefits. You might even deploy them as marine vessels in ports [1], so that in the event of a (hopefully rare!) catastrophic failure, flooding the reactor with water is trivial. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power...
- jhayward 6y agoTell us how much, on a per-KWh, the design, build, and operational costs of a Navy reactor are please.
- credit_guy 6y agoI don't know about others, but personally I am not very comfortable with the idea of a military branch becoming financially independent.
- koolk3ychain 6y agoThat said, all of these reactors have been on platforms surrounded by water and are occupied by hundreds if not thousands of trained (some highly trained) crew 24/7. It goes without saying that many of those crew are also armed or directly tasked with ensuring nobody can tamper with the nuclear power source / any part of the platform. I should also add a very good friend of mine is a nuclear engineer who works on submarines. I'm not sure it's even fair to compare the operational discrepancies of something as simple as a test / training reactor to a nuclear heat source at a concrete plant?
- foxyv 6y agoI try to think about nuclear energy the same way I think about chemical hazards. Chemical spills are happening all the time and we hardly notice unless we are ordered to evacuate. Nuclear seems a lot more scary, but it's not really much more dangerous than a LOT of industrial chemical plants. In addition oversight for Nuclear is WAY better. If there is a breach we're way more likely to know, rather than wondering why everyone in a certain Indiana town is getting a rare form of cancer from an unreported chemical spill. Risk tolerance wise, I would rather have one of these running next door, than having a steel plant 20 miles away... https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2020-01-22/evacuations-after-chemical-released-at-california-plant https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/... https://apnews.com/article/27ee93094ce81e2522bd495138db9554 https://apnews.com/article/27ee93094ce81e2522bd495138db9554 https://apnews.com/article/61b2a91a8e4042f1a8d43e734551f159 https://apnews.com/article/61b2a91a8e4042f1a8d43e734551f159
- walleeee 6y agoJust spitballing, but if we're going to play with things like nuclear reactors, why not keep them and their waste relatively close to human settlements specifically in order to promote a culture of responsible management? This is founded on the proposition that everyone trying to push ecological costs somewhere else, somewhere "over there", can be way more dangerous to human wellbeing than the occasional natural disaster or accident.
- m4rtink 6y agoWe have district heating from the Temelin NPP for part of Central Bohemia here in Czech Republic: https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:20085809 https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:20085809 Similar setup is planned also for the Dukovany NPP but not yet built. Modern efficient district heating (hot water pipes with thick insulation instead of the old steam based systems) is quite popular around here and thermal power plants or waste incinerators are often run in co-generation mode where they produce both electricity and district heating.
- timonoko 6y agoEastern Europe is so lucky they have not massive redgreen parties. Minireactors will never-ever happen in Nordic countries, because Greta Thunberg and the woke crowd do not want any atoms coming from their radiators.
- nabla9 6y agoTechnically these only for heating reactors are sound business case. From the investor, regulator, customer perspective there are many problems that are not startup solvable. 1. End-of-life and maintenance guarantees. Transferring nuclear waste and processing them is not cheap. You need to put capital aside to pay for these. Startup going bust and leaving customers to handle with the rest is not an option. 2. Regulations and safety. Just like standard nuclear, you need government subvention (not direct money transfer, but a law that puts upper cap to damages). You can solve these with scale. If you build 1000s of standardized units of small heating reactors, special waste management and transportation solutions for just this type becomes economical. If they sell only 500, lifetime cost can be astronomical.
- gruez 6y ago>there are many problems that are not startup solvable. >1. End-of-life and maintenance guarantees. Transferring nuclear waste and processing them is not cheap. You need to put capital aside to pay for these. Why isn't that solvable? You just provided a solution, ie. rather than charging $100k for a reactor, they'll charge $100k + $20k disposal fee (to be put in a trust or something). Why can't this be done by a startup?
- samcheng 6y agoThe cleanup costs for a nuclear reactor can be more than the construction cost, and novel / experimental reactor types can present major challenges after decommissioning. Your trust idea is a good one, maybe with some insurance added, but it really does impact the economics of the project. That said, nuclear reactors as thermal generators are a great idea, particularly for e.g. cement manufacturing, which is a huge producer of greenhouse gasses. This is one area where I support nuclear over wind/solar. I hope this works!
- gruez 6y ago>cement manufacturing, which is a huge producer of greenhouse gasses AFAIK most of the co2 is from the chemical reaction itself, not the heat source used. From wikipedia: >First, the limestone (calcium carbonate) is burned to remove its carbon, producing lime (calcium oxide) in what is known as a calcination reaction. This single chemical reaction is a major emitter of global carbon dioxide emissions.[10]
- pfdietz 6y agoA problem here is that heat is very easy to store. So if one can make heat from intermittent power (say, resistively, or with some kind of heat pump) then storage becomes much less of an issue than if one wanted to store the electrical energy itself. In any environment where renewable power is being curtailed, the cost of using that power to make heat will be very low. Nuclear heat will be competing against a very low cost alternative.
- Pfhreak 6y agoIs that true at extremely high temperatures? I would think that high temperatures are harder to store.
- pfdietz 6y agoFirebrick or silicon carbide. The latter could store heat up to 1800 C, and act as its own resistive heater. Firebrick is century old technology, used for regenerative heating of air in steel making (outgoing gas heated firebrick, then air was drawn through that on the next pass, with two banks of firebrick being used in alternation).
- LinuxBender 6y agoI learned something new today. I was going to use kiln-fired bricks for a rocket mass heater, but I had never heard of silicon carbide bricks. They cost a lot more $10 vs $3 but for a small project, those are perfect. Thankyou!
- crote 6y agoA problem is that insulators work better with a lower temperature gradient, so hotter storage will lose more energy per second.
- pfdietz 6y agoThe studies I have seen show minor energy loss (a few percent a day) although this is a function of scale.
- jansan 6y agoTrump issued an executive order on Janurary 12th with the title "Executive Order on Promoting Small Modular Reactors for National Defense and Space Exploration" https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-promoting-small-modular-reactors-national-defense-space-exploration/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or... Seems like this will be a thing in the not too distant future.
- sradman 6y ago> Recent experience suggest that the SMR producers could face the same cost overruns and delays that have plagued makers of utility-scale reactors. An even bigger challenge could be convincing industries and utilities to forgo cheap natural gas. Off-the-grid remote locations is the obvious market for electricity generation currently addressed with diesel fuel. Combined electricity/heat for large campuses and remote communities seems like another popular use case. This article makes the case for high temperature industrial processes like the manufacture of Portland cement. I'd like to see an economic analysis but I can't see this being a viable option unless carbon emissions regulation penalizes fossil fuels. Geography not only determines what is and is not available on-grid (electricity and/or natural gas) but the regulatory regime which can significantly impact design decisions.
- sandworm101 6y ago>> Off-the-grid remote locations is the obvious market The difficulty is that while these reactors are, somewhat, portable they are still massive heavy things. Any "remote location" with a road that could carry one of these things probably has a power line running alongside that road too. It would be great to have one of these at any number of high arctic communities, but getting them there is probably not possible other than by ship to coastal ports. Even then, the crane requirements probably preclude most ports. They need to be lighter if they want to push into remote communities.
- sradman 6y agoGreat point. Do we have a comparison point with diesel generators in terms of the largest module that cannot be broken down further? I suspect that there is a seasonality to the roads too and let's not forget that some communities may be accessible by ship/barge.
- sandworm101 6y agoShip/barge still require cranes and piers capable of handling such loads. Diesel engines come in literally any size one wants, from suitcase to aircraft carrier. Seasonal roads, soft surfaces roads, probably won't be able to handle such loads even when open.
- vosper 6y agoThere’s a good Omega Tau podcast episode froma few weeks ago, called “Modern Fission Reactors”, that covers modular reactors (and many other interesting reactor topics) https://omegataupodcast.net/359-modern-fission-reactors/ https://omegataupodcast.net/359-modern-fission-reactors/
- trianglem 6y agoHasn’t the problem always been that small nuclear reactors like this are a huge security risk?