22 ms·

Saskatchewan, Ontario to roll out mini-nuclear reactors

• raydiatian 4y ago
  [The economics of a nuclear reactor](https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY https://youtu.be/cbeJIwF1pVY) In case this hasn’t already been shared
• foldedcornice 4y ago
  It looks like there may be a typo with the estimated year of deployment in Ontario: the estimate is likely for 2028, not 2018. The article was published on July 11, 2022, but opens with: "Saskatchewan and Ontario have each chosen GE-Hitachi as the supplier of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), which could be deployed in the Prairie province by the 2030s and in Ontario by 2018." Then, the article concludes with: "GEH and Ontario plan to construct up to four 300 MWe small module reactors, with the first coming online by 2028." A separate source by The Canadian Press [0] also reflects an estimate of 2028 for Ontario: "The governments of Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Alberta have put forward a nuclear plan that they say will transition them toward cleaner energy. The provinces’ energy ministers agreed today to a joint plan for small modular reactors, with the first 300-megawatt plant to be built in Darlington, Ont., by 2028." [0] https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/renewables/ontario-saskatchewan-new-brunswick-and-alberta-agree-on-plan-to-build-small-nuclear-reactors https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/renewables/onta...
  • QuadrupleA 4y ago
    Article goes on to mention a "300W-solar power farm" (could power a desktop PC for $300M) and that the SMR could power "240,0000 homes".
    • osuairt 4y ago
      There is a push by conservative Canadian politicians in Ontario and Saskatchewan to use Uranium. Saskatchewan wants to have a mining contract. While Doug Ford of Ontario, wants to maintain the energy monopoly in the province, and has actively torn down recently completed and functional wind farm projects. I would gather that you will be hearing less about this after Doug Ford leaves.
      • arcticbull 4y ago
        While I also hate Ford and think he's a national embarrassment, 60% of Ontario's power comes from 3 nuclear power plants: Bruce, Darlington and Pickering. We're happy with our nuclear [1]. We'd be happy with wind and solar too - but substantially the entire Ontario grid is already renewable. 92% zero-carbon power. [2] [1] https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/canadians-support-government-investment-in-renewables-and-clean-nuclear-energy-to-fight-climate-change-despite-competing-economic-priorities-reveals-new-study-836855313.html https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/canadians-support-gove... [2] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles/provincial-territorial-energy-profiles-ontario.html https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr...
        • osuairt 4y ago
          If you have to mine a finite Uranium resource from Saskatchewan, you do not have renewable energy. https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/energy-sources-distribution/renewable-energy/about-renewable-energy/7295 https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/energy-sources...
          • jopsen 4y ago
            Just curious, how finite is it?
          • tedk-42 4y ago
            Agreed. Conflating nuclear with renewable into 'zero carbon' is wrong
          • rowanG077 4y ago
            Is that really a problem? I mean technically any energy resource is finite/non-renewable due to second law of thermodynamics. That doesn't mean anything in practice.
          • throwaway5959 4y ago
            Ah yes, the old “what will we do in 10000 years when the Uranium runs out” problem.
    • Hamuko 4y ago
      A low-power desktop PC, since my not-massively-impressive gaming PC (i5-10600KF and RTX 3060) draws 330 W from the wall at peak.
      • Semaphor 4y ago
        Eh, my WQHD and FHD monitors, Ryzen 3600, RX 6600 tops out at about 320 W, so that should easily be below 300 for just the PC ;)
    • unsigner 4y ago
      I have noticed that bad things' energy output is measured in watts, and good things' energy output is measured in "homes powered". It's probably taught in journalism school nowadays, it's pervasive.
      • idiotsecant 4y ago
        To be pedantic, neither energy output is measured in watts :P, one of them might have power measured in watts though.
    • snewman 4y ago
      Nice. Yeah, the numbers in press articles are basically always wrong; it's just a question of whether you can notice the error. https://climateer.substack.com/p/numbers https://climateer.substack.com/p/numbers
  • mistrial9 4y ago
    notice the "western investor" source ..
• jollybean 4y ago
  What I don't understand is why they are still not done at scale, i.e. build 10 of these in the same spot and get the economic advantage and especially keep the security and risk things isolated.
  • nl 4y ago
    MIT looked at this: > they consider things like the possibility of using a central facility to produce high-performance concrete parts for the plant, as we have shifted to doing for projects like bridge construction. But this concrete is often more expensive than materials poured on site, meaning the higher efficiency of the off-site production would have to more than offset that difference. The material's performance in the environment of a nuclear plant hasn't been tested, so it's not clear whether it's even a solution. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plants-so-expensive-safetys-only-part-of-the-story/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...
  • recycledmatt 4y ago
    Article says they are building 4 at the same site - there are economies of scale in generation / transmission and in security, but more important building smaller plants may keep the cost overruns lower.
  • xorcist 4y ago
    The boring answer is that they're much less fuel efficient than what their size would suggest. As in, almost an order of magnitude. There are both science and engineering challenges to solve before they get competitive with established designs. That's why they haven't taken over.
• senectus1 4y ago
  so approx 5k per house... i wonder how long they last for?
  • tinco 4y ago
    Hadn't looked at it that way yet, that actually sounds really attractive. If they can be maintained and operated at under 1k per house per year then that's competitive with what I pay now. I wonder why it's so cheap when calculated this way it seems competitive with solar panels when I expected it to be a factor ten more expensive (of course solar panels wouldn't really work that far north).
    • labster 4y ago
      A lot of what you pay now is for maintenance of the lines and transformers.
    • DavidKarlas 4y ago
      If you calculate 300MW/240k homes, it comes out at 1.25kW per home which is not enough for peak demand...
      • adrianN 4y ago
        Especially not if we manage to electrify everything. The average American uses a little over 9kW of primary energy continuously. You can probably safely divide that by three if you use electricity, but still.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • xupybd 4y ago
    Yeah the pay back time is long but the cost of operation is so much lower than traditional fuels. It will pay off if it remains running for long enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY&ab_channel=IllinoisEnergyProf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbeJIwF1pVY&ab_channel=Illin...
• nl 4y ago
  > which could be deployed in the Prairie province by the 2030s and in Ontario by 2028. Note the "could be". Can the myth of cheap, safe and quick to deploy fission energy please die? It's not cheap, for good reasons[1]: > Among the surprising findings in the study, which covered 50 years of U.S. nuclear power plant construction data, was that, contrary to expectations, building subsequent plants based on an existing design actually costs more, not less, than building the initial plant. > The authors also found that while changes in safety regulations could account for some of the excess costs, that was only one of numerous factors contributing to the overages. It's not safe: > US nuclear regulators greatly underestimate potential for nuclear disaster, researchers say[2] > Now I was serving on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, [snip] In 2009, President Barack Obama named me the agency’s chairman. [snip] > Afterward, the falling cost of renewable power changed the calculus. Despite working in the industry for more than a decade, I now believe that nuclear power’s benefits are no longer enough to risk the welfare of people living near these plants. I became so convinced that, years after departing office, I’ve now made alternative energy development my new career, leaving nuclear power behind. The current and potential costs — in lives and dollars — are just too high. [3] It's always slow to deploy[4]: > Finland's long-delayed Olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor connected to the power grid for the first time on Saturday, the plant's operator said, 12 years after its planned launch. Located on Finland's west coast, Olkiluoto-3 is the country's first new nuclear plant in over four decades and Europe's first in almost 15 years. [1] https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 https://news.mit.edu/2020/reasons-nuclear-overruns-1118 [2] https://phys.org/news/2017-05-nuclear-greatly-underestimate-potential-disaster.html https://phys.org/news/2017-05-nuclear-greatly-underestimate-... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nuclear-power-industry-now-i-think-it-should-be-banned/2019/05/16/a3b8be52-71db-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nucl... [4] https://www.dw.com/en/finlands-much-delayed-nuclear-plant-launches/a-61108015 https://www.dw.com/en/finlands-much-delayed-nuclear-plant-la...
  • towaway15463 4y ago
    Anti-nuke sentiment is the reason we are facing global warming right now. Just stop it.
• defrost 4y ago
  >> Each of the 300 MWe SMRs cost between $1 billion to $1.5 billion and can provide enough electricity to power approximately 240,0000 homes. . . . with bonus '0' and misplaced comma at no extra cost I trust?
• woleium 4y ago
  Will they provide the tritium required to bridge the gap to fusion? Canada provides almost all the world supply, but it's from stockpiles iirc. Once fusion is up and working, it can generate its own tritium, but ITERs tritium generation experiment has been massively scaled back, so we need more from nuclear reactors. see https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run-fuel-even-gets-started https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run... for more info.
  • BbzzbB 4y ago
    >Once fusion is up and working That's one gargantuan "once", let's plan our energy generation assuming it doesn't materialize, we can always recalibrate if it does.
    • samatman 4y ago
      The pace of change in the last fifteen years has been nonlinear. Let's not take it for granted, for sure, but let's maybe dial back on the "fusion is always 20 years away" jokes. There isn't a bigger win for civilization than fusion, leaving aside unknowns: immortality might be possible, fusion was our only source of energy until the discovery of fission.
      • acidburnNSA 4y ago
        Yeah but make sure to read the Voodoo Fusion article along the way. https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf https://vixra.org/pdf/1812.0382v1.pdf
        • Gud 4y ago
          Interesting how it excludes the most promising fusion start ups, especially Commonwealth Fusion Systems. What is the point of addressing the challenges fusion face when the best contenders are completely ignored? CFS are betting that the new breed of super conducting magnets(REBCO) will make fusion commercially viable. Beyond that, their reactor design is basically from the 50s. Tried and true design + modern materials = success? See Prof. Dennis Whyte, one of the of cofounders of CFS explain why he believes that fusion is coming sooner than you might think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
• jesstaa 4y ago
  So it's estimated to cost 4x the cost of wind or solar today and it's not being deployed for at least 10yrs. Sounds like a bargain.
  • throwaway894345 4y ago
    Can you share your math? How much storage are you factoring in for renewables?
    • mikefallen 4y ago
      https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9 https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9. Tldr $20 per kilowatt hour in energy capacity costs. That’s how cheap storage would have to get for renewables to get to 100 percent. Also the land requirements for huge solar / wind installations is another downside. Nuclear at scale is a clear winner especially in seismically stable regions of NA.
      • nl 4y ago
        Awesome link! > If other sources meet demand 5% of the time, electricity costs fall and the energy capacity cost target rises to $150/kWh. So just 5% of grid supply from something like gas lets you use storage for baseload now! Battery storage is now available for as low as $55/MWh. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
        • brutusborn 4y ago
          It's not critical, but I think you are looking at the wrong page. $55 is on the /MW basis, the next page shows $131/MWh which is still good. The source is "Lazard estimates", but I can't find anything close to this in reality. Pumped hydro is meant to be super cheap, but is currently ~ $100/kWh. I'm starting to agree with the other commenter that Lazard is bunk. "Pumped hydro is already the cheapest energy storage technology in the world in terms of cost per installed kilowatt-hour of capacity. Total project costs range between $106 and $200 per kilowatt-hour, compared to between $393 and $581 for lithium-ion batteries, World Bank figures show." https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pumped-hydro-moves-to-retain-storage-market-leadership https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/pumped-hydro-mo...
• pj_mukh 4y ago
  My dad worked on these for the (even further north) northern provinces. I forget which company, but I know one of these were sold as being tested to be safe under a direct missile hit in case of an attack! Super cool. Edit: Territories, not provinces. All three of them.
  • smnrchrds 4y ago
    > northern provinces You mean territories?
    • throwawaytemp27 4y ago
      Not sure why you were downvoted. As a Canadian I’ve never heard the expression northern provinces, because that’s nonsense they basically all start at the border.
      • karmakaze 4y ago
        While this is correct, I can understand any confusion. I've never seen a Canadian address form that said "Province or Territory: _______". I'm pleased if a form switches from asking for 'State' to 'Province' when the country is changed.
    • pj_mukh 4y ago
      Yea my bad. Territories. But maybe not for long! [1] [1] https://www.nunavutnews.com/news/quassa-says-next-step-for-nunavut-is-becoming-a-province/ https://www.nunavutnews.com/news/quassa-says-next-step-for-n...
• patientplatypus 4y ago
• joshlemer 4y ago
  Why doesn’t Saskatchewan and Northern Ontario just import most of its electricity from Manitoba?
  • epgui 4y ago
    It's not at all obvious why you think this question is so obvious that it doesn't require a bit more context. Why would it?
    • Pxtl 4y ago
      Manitoba has spectacularly cheap and plentiful hydroelectric power.
      • nine_k 4y ago
        But is there enough surplus?
        • joshlemer 4y ago
          Yes. Manitoba already exports a lot of electricity to the Minnesota, Wisconsin, Saskatchewan, Ontario. It'll soon be bringing online the Keeyask dam as well which will add capacity for 400,000 more homes.
          • ztratar 4y ago
            For today. But I presume when these reactors are completed, the question is will that surplus be enough for the energy needs of ~2030. And there the answer is "we need to build more generation". No?
  • brutusborn 4y ago
    I imagine because it is cheaper to produce locally, or Manitoba does not have spare capacity. Why do you think they should import from Manitoba?
• throwaway81523 4y ago
  They looked at the price tags of these reactors vs solar and wind, and chose the lowest number, fine. But I've never heard of a nuclear project coming in at under multiple times its original estimate, and taking a decade or more longer than expected. Has any new nuclear power come online anywhere since Fukushima?
  • vondro 4y ago
    Olkiluoto EPR reactor in Finland was connected to the grid in March this year. There are 2 more EPRs in construction, in France and UK. So yes, there were new power plants coming online, but after budget overruns and missed timelines. Anyway, nuclear is still great baseline source of energy, so pity we don't build it better.
    • dividedbyzero 4y ago
      Olkiluoto isn't fully online yet, that's expected to happen in December after it didn't pass trials and required repairs. It would then be 13 years late and cost about four times what was planned. The other two are looking like they're going in a similar direction.
      • ttul 4y ago
        Thirteen years late and four times over budget for the first new plant in Finland in 42 years. I bet if they build a second one, it won’t take so long nor be so over-budget. In the UK, the Hinkley Point C project is over-budget and late, partly because they had problems with their initial concrete pours that necessitated exceptionally costly and time-consuming rebuilds. But as Hinkley gets closer to completion, the lessons learned are being transferred to Sizewell C, another EDF plant. [1] The world needs these large nuclear plants and we can’t just give up because the first few constructed went over budget and took too long. [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/06/23/energy-security-gives-climate-friendly-nuclear-power-plants-a-new-appeal https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/06/23/energy-securit...
        • 4y ago
• TheDudeMan 4y ago
  These are still too big. They will take too long and have huge cost overruns.
• piokoch 4y ago
  Mini nuclear reactors make a lot of sense especially in the areas with a lot of electricity-hungry industry, Polish copper producer KGHM is planning to build such reactors for their own needs (they use 1 GW a year) [1]. It will make their operations cheaper, saving on transfer losses alone on their scale is significant gain. [1] https://media.kghm.com/en/news-and-press-releases/kghm-plans-to-build-the-first-small-nuclear-reactor-smr-in-poland https://media.kghm.com/en/news-and-press-releases/kghm-plans...
• Linda703 4y ago
  [dead]
• rippeltippel 4y ago
  > A 300W-solar power farm would require 1.5 million solar panels and cost approximately $300 million, provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land. I assume 300W is actually 300MW. If that's correct, solar panels are still much more convenient, also considering that power plant will require many acres of land for the building, pipes, etc. Solar panels have zero waste too. What am I missing?
  • rdsubhas 4y ago
    Winter. Edit: I wonder why you had to copy/paste only part part of the line. They literally address this in the next word: > ...provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land needed was free and the sun shone steadily
    • slimebot80 4y ago
      Ah yes. There is no sun in winter.
      • orthecreedence 4y ago
        There's no sun under 5 feet of snow. There's also much less sun in overcast. And even less sun at northern latitudes. Oh, and bonus, wildfire smoke blotting out the sun regularly in the summers now! Seems sensible to pick a power source that doesn't depend on the sun with that many variables.
      • oceanplexian 4y ago
        I’ve lived in places in the US where the sun didn’t shine for an entire month in a particularly bad season. I have no idea what a month long utility-grade battery looks like but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.
      • krzyk 4y ago
        In winter solars produce fraction of the energy that they do in summer. You would need to oversize them 10x or even more. But then, during summer it would be wasted, unless you have a large accumulator.
• charles_f 4y ago
  > As a comparison with other non-emission options, BC Hydro’s 1,100 Mwe Site C dam is expected to cost $16 billion. I get that this is coming from a website whose name contains "investor". As combustible based options go, I think nuclear is the least worse, and a site-C equivalent in Sask is probably not even an option. I find it dangerous to a) put nuclear and hydro/wind in the same "non-emission" category, especially when nuclear does emit radioactive solid waste and the occasional radioactive cloud when they go boom, b) to reduce the comparison to a price-tag, where indeed nuclear will win
  • veltas 4y ago
    If a wind turbine catches fire it emits pollutants too. I think we're defining on the (usually reasonable) assumption all goes well and there isn't catastrophic failure.
    • ncmncm 4y ago
      It does not render the surrounding region uninhabitable.
  • DrBazza 4y ago
    How much noxious chemical waste, and by volume, is produced in the manufacture of the many thousands of solar panels and wind turbines though for the same power?
    • xorcist 4y ago
      You act like there aren't people who do things called "lifecycle analysis" professionally. There are very uncontroversial answers to your questions, even if you personally don't like them.
      • hunterb123 4y ago
        I don't think he was acting like there aren't people that analyze it, he was just asking for comparative numbers. If you have an uncontroversial answer to his question, simply say it. You seem to have taken personal offense to his question in general.
• walrus01 4y ago
  Have been seeing tech news articles about mini nuclear reactor coming really soon now for about 22 years, so far, none have actually happened.
  • usrnm 4y ago
    > so far, none have actually happened https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov Not without its fair share of criticism, budget overruns and all other problems associated with building new nuclear reactors these days, but it did happen
  • p1mrx 4y ago
    China connected an SMR to the grid several months ago: https://www.powermag.com/china-starts-up-first-fourth-generation-nuclear-reactor/ https://www.powermag.com/china-starts-up-first-fourth-genera...
  • ncmncm 4y ago
    There is less scope for corruption around SMR, so little demand when the main attraction of nukes is their prospect for a long-term corruption cash cow.
• fefe23 4y ago
  I'm stunned by the price difference. 1-1.5 billion for this power plant, but only 300-400 million for wind or solar. We really have come a long way in bringing down prices for wind and solar!
  • fenk85 4y ago
    Considering those produce 20-25% (at random) of time, are you adding he cost of storage to this?
  • JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
    This is why nuclear is dying and you don’t need the tinfoil hat explanations for why. Just like always, it comes down to money.
  • T-A 4y ago
    Keep in mind that wind and solar power figures typically quoted are for max effect. For solar that means noon on a cloud-free day. Most hours of most days, and all the nights, are not like that. So if you want a realistic comparison with something like a nuclear reactor, which can run steadily for months on end, you need to apply a significant multiplier for additional area and batteries.
  • nixass 4y ago
    The problem being you can only cry when there's no wind (or solar) while nuclear works 24/7/365 (minus maintenance)
    • stinos 4y ago
      Or according to another comment: spend the saved money (vs nuclear) on storage and smile instead? I don't know a lot about it, but what I know is enough to be pretty sure dismissive single-line statements (in either way) are usually not at all the full picture.
      • nixass 4y ago
        What storage? What tech? How would you scale up? You see, it's easy just to write things down and live in a dream that's enough to solve problems. But actually it's not.
• bratwurst3000 4y ago
  I made once an estimate that to power the whole energy( not power,current,ampere) of the world we need a surface of the sice of spain. And I took bad Sunlight into account. …. So I wonder why for most countries … why not go all in solar? Nuclear seems so much expensive and wastefull compared to solar. I know there is the storage problem. But most energy is directly consumed or has to be stores for a short period . Heat for example. And heat is stored in water.
• tiku 4y ago
  Perhaps change the headline.. "by 2030".
• st_goliath 4y ago
  > ... approximately 240,0000 homes. > ... > A 300W-solar power farm would require 1.5 million solar panels and cost approximately $300 million. ... watt??
  • Neil44 4y ago
    Yeah those numbers don't make sense, 300W should fit on a van but wouldn't power very much. Wonder how much sunshine they get up there.
  • Tepix 4y ago
    Must be 300 MW just like the nuclear reactor.
  • tonyarkles 4y ago
    The thing to keep in mind about that number and how small it seems... the entire province of Saskatchewan only has 1.17M people, about half of us are concentrated across two major cities (~600k people) and the rest are very sparsely distributed throughout the rest of the huge land mass. Overall, the 2016 census listed 432,620 private households through the province, so one of these reactors is providing half of our residential power. It's a huge win for us, since our base load is currently coal...
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• chendii 4y ago
  Does this still create waste that is dangerous for thousands of years? My understanding is that there is no long term solution for storing dangerous nuclear waste. They try burying it super deep in mountains. But can't be sure that it won't get out in the next few thousands of years. Everybody watch the documentary "Into Eternity" on the subject. Amazing.
  • foota 4y ago
    The earth is full of uranium, and yet we don't worry about it leaking out.
    • Tepix 4y ago
      Are you even serious?
  • gizmo 4y ago
    Nuclear waste is somewhat dangerous, but deep inside mountains it won't do any harm barring some kind of black swan event. Compare the risks of living near a nuclear waste storage facility and living downstream of a hydroelectric dam. I know what I would choose! If you demand absolute certainty over a thousand year period you'll be paralyzed into inaction. Any new technology and any political action could result in the eventual collapse of civilization. But inaction guarantees disaster because the status quo is unsustainable. So we have to make mundane risk/reward evaluations and from those we conclude that we can't do without nuclear energy.
    • Tepix 4y ago
      You are comparing the aftermath of a power plant with a plant that is producing energy. Would you rather live next to an active nuclear power plant or next to an active hydroelectic dam? There have been cases of increased cancer near nuclear power plants.
• mabbo 4y ago
  I think it's worth pointing out that nuclear is pretty well loved in Ontario. Around 2/3 of our energy is coming from it already. https://www.ieso.ca/power-data https://www.ieso.ca/power-data Nuclear is the base load, alternatives supply what they can, and hydroelectric dams and gas plants act as the variable load supply. If we can just lose the gas plants, we'd be pretty close to zero carbon. And I think that achievable.
  • throw0101a 4y ago
    > If we can just lose the gas plants, we'd be pretty close to zero carbon. And I think that achievable. Another 2500-3000 MW of nuclear would take up some more of the base load, and allow hydro to deal with most of the variable load.
    • mabbo 4y ago
      Maybe. There's an open question around whether hydro can handle that much more variable load. Climate change is changing rain patterns, which changes the parameters around hydro dams. Look at Texas- they only fall apart 1-2 days per year, but that's enough that it's a crisis every time. How confident are we that our hydro dams can sustain us in the worst case every year or decade? I think to achieve it, we would need to see financial incentives, direct or indirect, to have everyone buying up power batteries for their homes, reducing the variable load. Maybe price incentives like nearly free electricity at night and extra costs during the day, etc.
      • ironlake 4y ago
        People in Texas will be conserving power for most of the summer to "protect the grid". There's a good chance the power won't fail spectacularly like it did in the winter, but their lives are impacted.
        • formerkrogemp 4y ago
          > There's a good chance the power won't fail spectacularly like it did in the winter, but their lives are impacted. Perhaps the magnitude of the failure is lower, but it's still failing if they're having as many blackouts as they might have later this summer.
• brightball 4y ago
  Whatever happened to the idea of Thorium reactors? It seems like this would be the ideal use for them.
  • sushibowl 4y ago
    Still very much in the research stage. China has one experimental Molten Salt Reactor that was supposed to start up last year, but I'm not sure what's happening to it right now. If everything went as planned that would be the only operating thorium-fueled nuclear plant in the world. I think they are expecting to have commercially ready designs by 2030. India has a plan based on a three-stage fuel cycle, where the third stage runs on thorium. However they've had significant delays and the first prototype breeder reactor of the second stage is projected to be finished at the end of this year. The third stage is probably still some years away. India and China are probably the most ambitious in terms of thorium fuel cycle research. India has the world's largest thorium reserves, and hope to utilize it for their power generation. China's most pressing concern is their smog crisis, which they hope to solve partly with nuclear power. They are also aiming to own most of the intellectual property with regards to thorium reactors, and it is part of Xi Jinping's drive toward making China carbon neutral by 2060. Other countries have some small research initiatives but no concrete plans to build anything so far as I know.
• 0xTJ 4y ago
  I'm always shocked by how many anti-nuclear power people are on HN. So many have bought into fearmongering and lies about safety that oil and gas companies are happy to encourage. It's a non-reweable but quite clean and incredibly safe method of power generation. It produces far less harm to the environment than fossil fuel generation, which should be decommissioned as quickly as possible. Every time a government chooses too replace nuclear generation with fossil fuels out of choice (I'm looking at you, Germany), they're a traitor to their own people, and to all humans. And I'll never understand "green" people who actively protest against nuclear power. Yes, renewable power is better. But most of the power generated comes from fossil fuels, that needs to stop as soon as possible, which isn't happening in the short term via only renewable power. I highly recommend watching this video by Kurzgesagt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhAemz1v7dQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhAemz1v7dQ.
  • Tepix 4y ago
    For me it's the opposite, there's a ton of pro-nuclear people on HN who ignore • our past failures to get long-term storage of nuclear waste right • the cost and time overruns for building nuclear plants in the last several decades • the possible catastrophic failures even in a country like Japan • the long term storage issue and its cost. These serious unsolved issues are being hand-waved away again and again.
    • 0xTJ 4y ago
      * Long-term storage plans tend to be pretty solid, but then people remotely near it get rallied to protest it. * Any cases of that are management issues, not nuclear power generation issues. * Making safe nuclear reactors is a well-understood challenge. Even if you do include all incidents that have happened with outdated, flawed reactors, going all the way back, nuclear reactors have cause far less environmental damage and far fewer deaths per power unit than fossil fuels do. Also, this article is about SMRs, which have very different requirements. * Nuclear waste storage is a solved issue, this just repeats the first point.
• thereddaikon 4y ago
  Good for them. The way forward is with nuclear.
• AzzieElbab 4y ago
  Oh man. Canada is doing something smart in a very welcome change
• dagaci 4y ago
  These cost estimates do not include the maintenance of the waste products of nuclear energy production. These costs are astonishingly! If the 10,000 year costs fell on the producers and consumers directly (this is how it should be), they would quickly have a different point of different view
  • Nimitz14 4y ago
    I believe the costs for nuclear are longterm.
  • p1mrx 4y ago
    Drill hole, insert waste: https://vimeo.com/458322589 https://vimeo.com/458322589 It's really not that hard, except from a political standpoint.
    • dagaci 4y ago
      Thats fine, solutions are always fine. But ensure that only the consumers of this power and pay for its construction an upkeep
      • p1mrx 4y ago
        Also ensure that consumers pay for emitting atmospheric CO₂, including backup power when wind and solar are offline due to weather.
        • freemint 4y ago
          And when those numbers are run they turn out cheaper then nuclear
          • p1mrx 4y ago
            Do you mean that for the purpose of backing up wind and solar, it will be cheaper to use fossil fuels and sequester the carbon, than to use nuclear energy and sequester the waste?
• p1mrx 4y ago
  https://aris.iaea.org/PDF/BWRX-300_2020.pdf https://aris.iaea.org/PDF/BWRX-300_2020.pdf > The IC [Isolation Condenser] pool has an installed capacity that provides 7 days of reactor decay heat removal capability. The heat rejection process can be continued indefinitely by replenishing the IC pool inventory. It would be nice if we were building reactors that could shut down without any external input. NuScale seems to be closest to production with a walk-away safe design. In other words, change "7 days" to "infinity days".
• qwertox 4y ago
  What happens when after 5 or 10 years of the deployment of a dozen of these one of these shows signs of a critical part getting cracks, for example a pipe. Then all the remaining reactors will have to be shut down as well until the part is not only replaced, but the replacement has been certified. Isn't it better to put more effort into a big one instead?
  • djaychela 4y ago
    Large reactors are generally much harder to maintain and keep safe - there are a lot of reasons why they become significantly more difficult to keep safe, so I think that's the reasoning behind this.
• ComputerCat 4y ago
  Tried to read the article, but just kept picturing Homer Simpson
• tomohawk 4y ago
  > A 300W-solar power farm would require 1.5 million solar panels and cost approximately $300 million, provided the 1,500- to-1,800 acres of land needed was free and the sun shone steadily, It's worse than that. Let's say you get 12 hours of steady sunshine every day. What to do the other 12 hours? For that you'll need storage. Therefore, you will need to double the capacity of the solar array so that during that 12 hours you can both store power and deliver power to people who need it. But then no power store is 100% efficient, so you'll also need to add more panels for that. But then you're never going to get 12 hours of steady power every day. You're going to have to increase storage and panels to account for that too.