4 ms·

We can build small reactors if we really want them. Here’s a recent by the Illinois Energy Prof explaining one such case: “SMR - Small Module Nuclear Reactors

• Animats 5y ago
  Hopefully better than last time. - Fort St. Vrain, US[1]. High temperature gas cooled reactor. Operated for 12 years. Corrosion problems. Converted to natural gas. - AVR reactor, Germany.[2] Pebble bed reactor. Had a pebble jam. Not repairable. Most fuel removed. Pressure vessel remains on site, with hope of full decommissioning in a century or so. There's a small reactor of this design working at a university in China, and a medium sized one one (200MW electrical output) is supposed to come on line this year. We'll see how that works out. Boring old boiling water and pressurized water reactors have simplicity in the radioactive part, and water is easy to handle. Designs that involve moving pellets or chemical processing of radioactive fluids add much complexity to a system that is very hard if not impossible to repair. The track record of such reactors is not good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_St._Vrain_Generating_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_St._Vrain_Generating_Stat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor
  • p_l 5y ago
    Boring old water cooled reactors (both boiling and pressured) are comparatively dangerous compared to quite well tested lead-bismuth cooled small modular reactors, which not only loadable on train car as self-contained part that needs no internal access, but are self-sealing in case of failure. Of course it's not as exotic as pebble bed reactor, or helium-cooled uranium-thorium reactor.