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The SMR community does have a lot of hype, but the general idea seems fairly sound. Instead of building huge reactors on site, as basically big one off projects

The SMR community does have a lot of hype, but the general idea seems fairly sound. Instead of building huge reactors on site, as basically big one off projects. Instead, mass produce a bunch of smaller modular reactors at a factory. That doesn't seem much different than a modular home vs a custom home to me, with the modular home being way cheaper. But we will see if it actually works. But for me the biggest issue is, if fighting climate change is so important, why wouldn't we try everything possible? Why do so many people insist on only renewables?

baybal2 6y ago
You have smaller logistics costs for smaller reactor, yes... But you don't have reduction in marginal logistics cost per unit of energy produced. While reactor vessels themselves are most expensive single piece in the nuclear power station, they are not going to save much on them by making them smaller, and they would not get any cheaper from mass manufacturing.
- 2trill2spill 6y ago
  I don't know, the idea that mass manufacturing wouldn't lower the price of something seems kinda ridiculous, you have any examples of a product where mass manufacturing didn't lower the price? If you said something like "mass manufacturing wont make them cheap enough to be economical", that seems believable, but I'm not sure how you can blanket declare it wont make them any cheaper.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    This has been my argument for a long time. Standardize on one of the designs that makes "going critical" is impossible and is "good enough" as power generation and let mass production do its thing. I believe that a lot people who are into "green energy" are also anti-capitalists and think that terms like mass-production are dirty words and tend to ignore history.
  - Atheros 6y ago
    > idea that mass manufacturing wouldn't lower the price of something seems kinda ridiculous The "something" to be manufactured isn't nuclear power plants. If we made a few 5 MW plants at a certain price but then decided to scale that up and produce huge amounts of 5 MW plants then we could obviously produce those plants at a significantly lower per-unit cost. Everyone agrees. But our goal with electricity isn't to make plants, it's to make watt-hours of electricity. So what is cheaper? Manufacturing, setting up, operating, and securing 1000 5 MW plants or one 5 GW plant? It seems like the 5 GW one might be cheaper.
    - Accujack 6y ago
      >The "something" to be manufactured isn't nuclear power plants. Wrong, actually. Whenever multiple nuclear plants for submarines in a given class are manufactured, the fact that multiples are being built does lower the cost, although most of that is just from having a complete design to use rather than any kind of mass production. Navy reactors aren't really SMRs since they're also old technology, but they're a good example of how much easier/cheaper/greener it is to build small reactors instead of large ones. > It seems like the 5 GW one might be cheaper. Small modular reactors typically run up to 300MW in size. There are very few applications for a 5GW reactor. Besides, the costs of the small reactors in terms of time, money, operating expense, security and other things are so much less than for the large plants that the math really doesn't work anyway, even for your extreme example of 1000 5MW reactors.
    - 2trill2spill 6y ago
      > So what is cheaper? Manufacturing, setting up, operating, and securing 1000 5 MW plants or one 5 GW plant? It seems like the 5 GW one might be cheaper. It's not 1000 5MW plants vs 1 5GW plant, each SMR plant would have dozens of smaller cores. Most of the plans I see are in the 300MW - 1100MW range. > Everyone agrees. But our goal with electricity isn't to make plants, it's to make watt-hours of electricity. If the goal is to create carbon free electricity then making as many carbon free power plants is exactly how you'd get more watt-hours.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
I think as you do. People are not going to settle for "Well we can keep solar up for up to a few hours when the blizzard comes and reduces radiation levels by 70% with our new battery bank". That's not going to cut it when the blizzard lasts for week. That will never get off the ground.

baybal2 6y ago

You have smaller logistics costs for smaller reactor, yes... But you don't have reduction in marginal logistics cost per unit of energy produced. While reactor vessels themselves are most expensive single piece in the nuclear power station, they are not going to save much on them by making them smaller, and they would not get any cheaper from mass manufacturing.

2trill2spill 6y ago
I don't know, the idea that mass manufacturing wouldn't lower the price of something seems kinda ridiculous, you have any examples of a product where mass manufacturing didn't lower the price? If you said something like "mass manufacturing wont make them cheap enough to be economical", that seems believable, but I'm not sure how you can blanket declare it wont make them any cheaper.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  This has been my argument for a long time. Standardize on one of the designs that makes "going critical" is impossible and is "good enough" as power generation and let mass production do its thing. I believe that a lot people who are into "green energy" are also anti-capitalists and think that terms like mass-production are dirty words and tend to ignore history.
- Atheros 6y ago
  > idea that mass manufacturing wouldn't lower the price of something seems kinda ridiculous The "something" to be manufactured isn't nuclear power plants. If we made a few 5 MW plants at a certain price but then decided to scale that up and produce huge amounts of 5 MW plants then we could obviously produce those plants at a significantly lower per-unit cost. Everyone agrees. But our goal with electricity isn't to make plants, it's to make watt-hours of electricity. So what is cheaper? Manufacturing, setting up, operating, and securing 1000 5 MW plants or one 5 GW plant? It seems like the 5 GW one might be cheaper.
  - Accujack 6y ago
    >The "something" to be manufactured isn't nuclear power plants. Wrong, actually. Whenever multiple nuclear plants for submarines in a given class are manufactured, the fact that multiples are being built does lower the cost, although most of that is just from having a complete design to use rather than any kind of mass production. Navy reactors aren't really SMRs since they're also old technology, but they're a good example of how much easier/cheaper/greener it is to build small reactors instead of large ones. > It seems like the 5 GW one might be cheaper. Small modular reactors typically run up to 300MW in size. There are very few applications for a 5GW reactor. Besides, the costs of the small reactors in terms of time, money, operating expense, security and other things are so much less than for the large plants that the math really doesn't work anyway, even for your extreme example of 1000 5MW reactors.
  - 2trill2spill 6y ago
    > So what is cheaper? Manufacturing, setting up, operating, and securing 1000 5 MW plants or one 5 GW plant? It seems like the 5 GW one might be cheaper. It's not 1000 5MW plants vs 1 5GW plant, each SMR plant would have dozens of smaller cores. Most of the plans I see are in the 300MW - 1100MW range. > Everyone agrees. But our goal with electricity isn't to make plants, it's to make watt-hours of electricity. If the goal is to create carbon free electricity then making as many carbon free power plants is exactly how you'd get more watt-hours.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

I think as you do. People are not going to settle for "Well we can keep solar up for up to a few hours when the blizzard comes and reduces radiation levels by 70% with our new battery bank". That's not going to cut it when the blizzard lasts for week. That will never get off the ground.