47 ms·
US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design
- Melting_Harps 4y agoInteresting, Rolls Royce is doing the same in the UK and have been working on this since last year [0]. After having dealt with SONGS not long after Fukushima and seeing first hand the long-term adverse effects of Chernobyl in Europe I became anti-nuclear, but in time I realize that in reality what I was actually anti 20th Century nuclear business model and the corrupt regulatory frame work as most were built haphazardly in locations with immense inherit pitfalls, coupled with poor long-term logistical and waste management planning and ignored continuous warnings to decommission--TEPCO stated that the Fukushima disaster was entirely avoidable. And that is what I think still needs to addressed, because the regulatory capture of these agencies poses a much bigger issue than these small reactors do, which are seemingly promising solutions to contribute to the World's energy needs. 0: https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/ https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactor...
- mountainriver 4y agoAs a complete novice, this could be a game changer? The ability to centralize the production I imagine radically reduces the cost, or at least has the potential to. With all the energy challenges we face, could the US government subsidize a program like this and make it a silver bullet?
- pydry 4y agoDepends what it costs. Since the article neglected to give a figure, Im pretty skeptical it's going to be competitive.
- LinuxBender 4y agoThis video [1] talks about some of the potential cost savings and reduction in time to deployment. There is one being installed near me so I guess time will tell how realistic the projections are. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxXlD4e-wTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxXlD4e-wTE
- ncmncm 4y agoThe most reliable output of the nuke industry has always been dishonesty. There is no reason to expect this will change suddenly, or that it has already.
- wjnc 4y ago$ 3 billion for 720 MW of power (2019 figure) [1]. More recent figure of $ 5.5 cents per KW/h [2]. So about 4x cost overrun leeway to be competitive in Europe. That seems manageable? [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/smaller-safer-cheaper-one-company-aims-reinvent-nuclear-reactor-and-save-warming-planet https://www.science.org/content/article/smaller-safer-cheape... [2] https://www.nucnet.org/news/first-customer-has-set-lcoe-target-for-smr-of-usd55-mwh-says-co-founder-4-4-2021 https://www.nucnet.org/news/first-customer-has-set-lcoe-targ...
- ncmncm 4y agoNo. It is not. The US govt is massively subsidizing this whole venture, and none of that cost to taxpayers is figured in.
- ch4s3 4y agoYou’d need to compare to the subsidies and externalities of other power sources then right?
- pydry 4y agoSolar panel imports are even slapped with tarriffs. It's unlikely if you compared like for like it would come anywhere near the subsidies nuclear demands.
- ch4s3 4y agoInstallation is subsidized and you need to massively overbuild without storage or otherwise build storage.
- ncmncm 4y agoOverbuild of solar and wind has become cheap. But overbuild required is nowhere near that commonly assumed. Storage will of course be built too, at overwhelmingly less cost than nukes, and much, much faster. But, first, the generation capacity to charge it up from.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago> costs 1 Fukushima is too many, no?
- luckylion 4y agoNo. Fukushima is a price I'd gladly pay and I expect every reasonable person to agree. The alternative isn't "no Fukushima", the alternative is hundreds of thousands deaths per year by burning coal. It's just not "one huge bang" so people don't realize it, because understanding abstract dangers is hard.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoJust improve decentralized energy storage and micro-grids.
- Veedrac 4y agoAbsolutely. The Fukushima disaster: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_di... The earthquake: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_... Zero known fatal injuries out of 20,000 were caused by the reactor. If I've done the math right, a nominally operative coal plant over Fukishima's 40 year lifetime would have caused 5ish deaths. Fukishima did cause a few cases of cancer, but so does nominally operative coal. People can gripe about tail risks from environmental pollution when it's not displacing a worse modal risk. Right now it's unreasonable to. Proliferation risk is concerning; most of the rest is just scale insensitivity.
- ncmncm 4y agoNukes' competition is not coal. It is renewables. Comparing to coal is tendentious and disingenuous, not to say dishonest.
- ch4s3 4y agoNot really m. Something has to provide power when the sun and wind aren’t available. Right now that’s natural gas, coal, hydro, or nuclear.
- TheDudeMan 4y agoYes, this is huge, IMO.
- ethbr0 4y agoI learned on HN that we almost did this in the 1970s, albeit with large but modular reactors. The effort extended far into construction of the (very large!) factory facility. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31467070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31467070
- panick21_ 4y agoIt cuts both ways. You lose the scale, but its more modular. Putting a conventional PWR in such a modular system isn't a silver bullet and has you to be proven to actually be cheaper and a game changer. If you simply want 1.5GW it might be simpler to just put a single PWR there rather then like 5 of them. I would say real GenIV modular reactors are the silver bullet, this is a step in the right direction.
- mapmeld 4y agoYes. When I attended an IAEA Safeguards conference in 2018, there were a number of these civilian nuclear battery designs but none had been built. A small nuclear battery can replace building-size diesel generators which remote communities and islands, data centers, etc. currently use as a primary or backup power source.
- lucidguppy 4y agoThe less operators have to worry about the better. Its harder to cut corners when there are less corners to cut.
- jonnycomputer 4y agothat's why i prefer that my nuclear reactors be spherical.
- MerelyMortal 4y agoWe're halfway there! On the horizontal plain, this one is spherical.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y agoSome numbers. NuScale says their nuclear power module (NPM) output capacity is 77 MW (gross) [1]. NuScale says their plant designs can combine up to 12 NPMs for 924 MW total output [2]. One megawatt can power 400-1000 homes [3]. [1] https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview [2] https://www.nuscalepower.com/about-us/faq#T2 https://www.nuscalepower.com/about-us/faq#T2 [3] https://www.betterhomelab.com/how-many-homes-can-1-mw-power/ https://www.betterhomelab.com/how-many-homes-can-1-mw-power/
- blacksmith_tb 4y agoThose numbers look excellent, but we'll need to see the pricetag for a dozen, and also if they can be rolled off the line rapidly.
- zbrozek 4y agoI think siting challenges and getting permitting approvals are likely to drive costs to non-competitiveness even if the reactor is free. And that's a terrible shame since the factory-built approach makes so much sense and our need for clean, reliable base load is so dire. Europe could really use quite a few boatloads of these reactors right now.
- SnowHill9902 4y agoGeneration is just part of that. High-power interconnection is a difficult and expensive problem.
- adrianmonk 4y agoPart of NuScale's concept is that these can be installed at sites of decommissioned coal plants: https://www.nuscalepower.com/environment/coal-plants https://www.nuscalepower.com/environment/coal-plants And the grid already has good connections to those sites. Whether that actually can be done is another question. Many people want traditional nuclear located as far away as possible from populated areas, but with coal they aren't as picky about location. NuScale's version of nuclear is supposed to be much safer, but who knows if that will put people at ease enough that it can be put wherever is convenient.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Small nuclear reactors: tiny NuScale reactor gets safety approval - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24358850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24358850 - Sept 2020 (541 comments) NuScale’s small nuclear reactor is first to get US safety approval - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24345288 - Sept 2020 (5 comments) Nuclear Commission Approves a Safety Aspect of NuScale Power’s Advanced Reactor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16225386 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16225386 - Jan 2018 (47 comments)
- helloworld11 4y agoAnd 40 years later, after dozens of billions or more spent, someone might just be allowed to finally build an amazingly clunky, drastically bloated up version of it that has been finally approved by a myriad storm of shifting regulations and unhappy contrary interests.
- capableweb 4y agoWhich, hopefully, because of all these regulations and bureaucracy, won't have any issues that will cause (again) a meltdown of the public opinion about nuclear reactors. If some serious accident happens with something like this, be prepared to wait another 40 years before anyone dares to propose nuclear energy again.
- epistasis 4y agoThough public opinion and regulations might be a barrier too, there's a more elementary and fundamental problem around nuclear: cost and time. Even France, without the regulatory or public opinion problems, is having difficulty building nuclear, and the construction project at Flamanville is an unmitigated disaster, just exactly the same as the US's recent projects at Vogtle and Summer. And that's the reason that SMR designs are even being attempted. The design has always been rejected in the past as uneconomical. But with large reactor design proven to uneconomical, and a huge devotion to nuclear among some, SMRs are giving it a go again. If nuclear worked well, there are always populations that welcome them nearby. Most, but not all, of our current 100GW has supportive neighbors. But I always find it curious that these lesser problems of public support and regulations get so much more attention than a far more fundamental problem: economic efficiency.
- ncmncm 4y agoPublic opinion does not drive. Cost drives. Nukes have only ever been built where the cost was substantially or completely absorbed off-budget, typically by taxpayers.
- GolfPopper 4y agoIt's not just the approval process. The late Admiral Rickover may have put it best, “An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose (’omnibus reactor’). (7) Very little development is required. It will use mostly off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now. “On the other hand, a practical reactor plant can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It is requiring an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. Corrosion, in particular, is a problem. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of the engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated."
- stevenjgarner 4y agoI remember during my undergraduate physics years at the University of Otago, we had a visiting guest speaker - I think it was Dale Bridenbaugh around 1976 when he had resigned as a manager in GE's nuclear division worried that their plants were not safe [0]. He had just also toured Australia as a guest speaker toward the anti-uranium effort [1]. At the time, Robert Muldoon was Prime Minister of New Zealand and was pursuing "think big" projects for NZ including a planned nuclear power station. As one of the "GE Three" [2], Bridenbaugh blew the whistle that the quoted price tag of the power plant did not include necessary safety precautions which he eloquently explained would cost at least an order of magnitude more (greater than the GDP of NZ). Of course the whole idea made no sense in a country blessed with hydro and geothermal resources. In the end the project was abandoned for total cost of ownership budget reasons rather than nuclear issues. I wonder what has changed since then? [0] https://www.times.org/nuclear-power-back/2018/3/8/the-long-tragic-trail-of-defective-general-electric-nuclear-reactors-from-hanford-to-fukushima https://www.times.org/nuclear-power-back/2018/3/8/the-long-t... [1] https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82alternatives.html https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/82alternatives.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Three
- yellow_lead 4y agoThe design maybe? This quote from the article may be a part of it > In addition, they're structured in a way to allow passive safety, where no operator actions are necessary to shut the reactor down if problems occur.
- peteradio 4y agoI wonder what strategies need to be employed to feel confident that you have even surfaced all the problems. Presumably there is a list of unmitigatable problems or worst defended attack vectors. But that is probably the hidden success of our last century, that and tight machine tolerances it's everywhere.
- tsimionescu 4y agoWell, to some extent it is a simple calculation. Depending on the amount and radioactivity of an isotope, you get a certain amount of heating. If you go past some amount, you start requiring active cooling to stop it from increasing faster and faster in temperature and reacting more violently - this may happen in traditional power plants. If instead you limit the reactor to a much smaller amount of fuel, it starts losing more heat to air than it produces from radioactivity, and this problem goes away. Of course, the problem is then to obtain that heating while the reactor is operational, but I understand the solutions are known. This is similar to why fusion reactors are not a risk of becoming nuclear weapons: the system requires external power input just to keep the reaction going. So, in the event of a problem, you'll lose the reaction, instead of it running away uncontrollably. Of course, there are other risks. For example, a fusion plant may suffer a breach of the reaction chamber, and all that energy will violently explode, releasing radioactive tritium and bits of radioactivated materials from the reactor structure around. I would guess MMRs have similar bad-but-not-catastophic failure modes.
- WaitWaitWha 4y agoFor those who are interested in the size (will it fit in my garage/car port?) The picture in the article is a NuScale Power Small Modular Power plant[0]. > Each NuScale reactor vessel is expected to be 9 feet (2.7 m) in diameter and 65 feet (20 m) tall, weighing 650 short tons (590 metric tons). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power
- QuarterReptile 4y agoThe tallness is pretty important to the design and is pretty much antithetical to everything about home design.
- p1mrx 4y agoExcept for Lord Farquaad's castle.
- aperson_hello 4y agoThe 60MW seems a bit more antithetical to home design than the height! That's a not-small amount of power.
- plasticchris 4y agoNo but it sounds about right to supply a large parking garage (or three!) of charging EVs.
- oittaa 4y agoAverage American drives 14,263 miles per year. Tesla Model 3 consumes 0.27 kWh/mi. Average American driving a Tesla uses 3851.01 kWh / year. 60MW reactor produces 525,600,000 kWh / year. So a single NuScale reactor could power a garage with 136,483 electric cars.
- plasticchris 4y agoSure, but there are a couple of things to consider like peak consumption (everyone gets home from work and plugs in) or potentially much better utilization of electric vehicles from av adoption which might happen in the timeframes needed to get this tech out.
- projektfu 4y agoThese could be used to create a real "smart grid" where very local variations are smoothed out among various reactors, with some battery storage for peaking. So long as people are willing to live near them.
- pas 4y agoPeople's attitude is quite plyable, it depends on what the group/party they currently follow (feel part of) tells them.
- lven 4y agoNot exactly. Nuclear reactors have a difficult time following the load because of Xenon poisoning. Xenon generated during the fission reactions absorbs neutrons that could have been used for fissions. Luckily, it decays away over time. If you turn down the reactor power, you have to wait hours or day for for Xenon buildup to decay so that you can turn the reactor back on. Some reactors manage to load follow more easily by adding lots of excess reactivity (more potent control rods) which is less safe overall. Smaller reactors will have the exact same issue. The amount of Xenon poisoning is proportional to the power density. NuScale reactors run at even higher power density than normal light water reactors, so they will have even worse Xenon poisoning. They won't be load following. One exception where this isn't true is micro gas-cooled reactors that have so low a power density that they have negligible xenon poisoning and can follow loads easily if necessary. Even then, it's not a great idea because of thermal cycling issues.
- panick21_ 4y agoSome reactors can also more effectively let xenon escape. That is one of the reasons why Alvin Weinberg wanted a liquid molten salt reactor, you can let the xenon bubble out like CO2 in a soft drink.
- pfdietz 4y agoAnd if you do that, then the 137Cs ends up in the off gas storage rather than in the molten salt. A good fraction of the fission products escape the salt, which kind of shoots down one of the main selling points of MSRs. https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-OverviewofMSRTechnologyandConceptsML17331B114.pdf https://gain.inl.gov/SiteAssets/MoltenSaltReactor/Module2-Ov... (see slide 23)
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoI think this is an area where industrial policy should play a serious role. I am firmly against a technology with such a unequal downside/upside ratio. It's not that nuclear fission is inherently unsafe, it's just that every reactor needs to be playing it's A game every day. We need to be lucky every day, mother nature only needs to be lucky once. Maybe, maybe we can treat these as giant durcell batteries and use them for five years then seal it in concrete on site. But that does not seem to be the play here - so all the recycling and transport and handling just scales up - and it costs to be on your A game. The US military might afford this. but even they will probably want to run down the costs in the next few decades.
- annexrichmond 4y ago> We need to be lucky every day, mother nature only needs to be lucky once. Sounds more like a slogan than an argument
- sgc 4y agoIt's also a terrible attitude to an engineering and operations challenge. What is this dark box of 'luck'? We know the potential concerns, and can design and act accordingly.
- CharlesW 4y ago> I am firmly against a technology with such a unequal downside/upside ratio. I'm very curious what you're basing this opinion on. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- haroldp 4y ago> it's just that every reactor needs to be playing it's A game every day. That is not necessarily true of modern reactor designs. Reactors can be designed so that neglect by the operators, loss of coolant and other failures result in the reaction passively coasting to a halt.
- sroussey 4y agoI wonder how long it Will take to certify the even smaller ones that are shipping container sized, by the likes of Radiant et al?
- lven 4y agoProbably the same or longer. In fact, the NuScale concept has been pursued since 2002, so more like 2 decades from concept to NRC certification. And you can tack on another 10 years for their hardware demonstration according to their published timelines. Size is not the question here. It's the analysis of the neutronics, thermal hydraulics, coupling of various systems, accident sequence prediction, etc. What takes time is credibility, ultimately getting all the parties involved to believe the calculations and understand the engineering decisions, and collectively agree that it's gonna work out. Have to convince the regulators, the advisory boards, the utility customers, the DOE, the suppliers.
- mikece 4y agoOutstanding! Instead of 300MW coal or gas-fired plants in metro areas we could have clusters of these. The shorter transmission distance will mean less line-loss, the factory-built design means economies of scale, and the passive-cooling post-scram ability means that it would be impossible to have a Fukushima type of accident due to loss of primary loop cooling. If every city acquire enough of these to cover 80% of their base load then we could cut carbon emissions so fast we it would astonish us all.
- kadonoishi 4y agoYeah. I'd note the need for a centralized fuel supplier, as you don't want hundreds of little municipal nuclear plants trying independently to dispose of the waste. Have a centralized "library" of nuclear fuel, where the plants "check out" the fuel and then turn it in when spent. The centralized authority can concentrate expertise on the issues of sourcing uranium, tracking where it is, then disposing of it safely. The small plants are then freed to focus on running the actual plant and providing reliable electricity to their cities.
- panick21_ 4y agoWhile this is an overall good development, and I wish the company luck. Its really not the solution. While scale is what killed nuclear, the people who initially decided on scale, did so for good reason. You lose a huge amount if you scale down, specially with PWRs. These small PWRs try to get some of that efficiency back with factory production, but at best it just evens out. The advantage is the added flexibility. So I don't think that putting traditional PWR in a tube is really any kind of series solution to transform our energy system. However there are good things coming out of this. For example, NuScale went threw a process managing multiple reactors from the same control room. That is the same thing that essentially all GenIV reactors want to do as well. Having managed to get that concept threw the regulator will make it massively easier for anybody that follows. Its a damn shame that we don't have GenIV reactors since the 80s. We had the technology and every reason to use it. We could be living in a nuclear age right now, and I consider it the largest failure of humanity that we failed to do so. People in 100 years will look back and think we were insane that we did not use the technology we discovered.
- reaperducer 4y agoIs disposal of nuclear reactor waste products a solved problem yet? Last I heard, the big "solution" was to stick it in sacred Native American mountains in Nevada and New Mexico and let future generations worry about it. If that's all we can do, people in 100, 200, 300 years may not be thinking what you're thinking they will think.
- RealityVoid 4y agoWhy would they not be thinking that? It's inaccessible and geologically stable. Besides, if we don't tackle the global warming problem, there might not _be_ generations 300 years down the line to judge our actions.
- troyvit 4y agoYeah there will. We're like rats: easy to kill as individuals but pretty hard to stamp out en masse.
- mwattsun 4y ago"The SMR’s 12 modules, each producing 50 megawatts" So each module is a little smaller than the reactor of the 1960's era submarine I served on and is based on the same pressurized water technology. I was a "nuke" so had to go in the reactor compartment several times. As far as I can remember, the reactor was about 10 feet in diameter. We went in the shipyard for refueling after the lifetime of the rods, which was 15 years. I could never understand why we didn't build these for civilian use (cost I figured) but now we will. Cool. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-029.pdf https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-...
- ksidudwbw 4y agoAnd that reactor has also tested and proven reliability. Quirks have been evened out
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mwattsun 4y agoWe never had a single problem with it in the years I was on board. There were few moving parts besides the control rods and a few valves. When I stood watch on the steam throttle the reactor power would spike when I opened the throttle up. I tell my kids I've controlled a nuclear chain reaction with my bare hands.
- omginternets 4y agoHow long did you serve? When you say "never had a single problem", are you being literal? I'm abstractly aware that nuclear technology is reliable, but your anecdote somehow makes it more relatable. You've piqued my curiosity :)
- lnsru 4y agoI really don’t understand this reliability question. There was Fukushima and Chernobyl in my lifetime. Fukushima got earthquake and tsunami at the same time. Shit happens. I have no opinion about Chernobyl since it was in a country with extremely poor working culture. But otherwise in my opinion nuclear power plant is just another piece of big machinery. Comparable to semiconductor fab. They have there enough of interesting gases to gas whole population of the next city. But it never happened yet.
- benevol 4y ago
- sedatk 4y agoWow, the sarcastic and judgemental language in the FAQ for a perfectly legitimate question says it all. It's borderline "how can your little brain not understand that..." and yet fails to answer it. Another "magnets, but this time it works" perpetual motion BS. Quote: > But I've been told that free energy is impossible because of the Law of Thermodynamics. > Does your mental flexibility allow for the scenario where the KryonEngine doesn't actually break this law? Can you imagine that there actually is no energy "coming out of nowhere"? Can you imagine that this "new" energy has in reality always been there, and we simply haven't been able to perceive it, because we haven't been taught how and where to look and measure? Don't stay trapped inside mental prison cells somebody else has built for you.
- Tildey 4y agoI was waiting for the part where it indicates that it’s satire, but it never came
- mkl 4y agoWhy do you keep spamming HN with this?
- bogdanu 4y agoNuScale is planning to install a few of them in Europe too. According to local news, the first EURO one will be installed in Romania.
- ncmncm 4y agoThat it is Romania should tell us something. Warn us, really.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y agoIn Poland as well - there seems to be a strong geo-strategic incentive to switch up energy dependency.
- pfdietz 4y agoPoland is in the sad position of being in one of the least favorable places for renewable energy in the world.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y agoNever thought about this actually. Any reason for this compared to say any of our neighboring countries?
- pfdietz 4y agoRelatively low amounts of wind and sun, high seasonality. Some of your closely neighboring countries are in a similar position. You can get a feel for this at my favorite simulation site, https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ Poland does have lots of salt under it, which bodes well for hydrogen storage in solution-mined caverns. Because of Poland's unfortunate renewable position, it's understandable that nuclear is still strongly considered there. But that's not really going to help Poland compete globally against countries with better resources. If solar can provide power for $0.013/kWh in UAE, it's tough for Poland's heavy industries to compete with that with more expensive nuclear.
- worik 4y agoWhat could possibly go wrong?
- YarickR2 4y agoFoundation is closer by a day. Bring it on, independent traders, we need walnut-sized reactors
- tomohawk 4y ago> just the seventh that has been approved for use in the US What a colossal failure. This seems more like evidence that the regulatory regime was designed to make nuclear power expensive and controlled by a small number of companies with deep pockets.
- ncmncm 4y agoNukes are inherently expensive. The NRC has saved us from enormous needless expense. We can spent all that on renewables now.
- ncmncm 4y agoFully half the development cost, and all of the construction and deployment cost of the first few placements, was picked up my US taxpayers. But Bill Gates and cronies retain 100% ownership.
- credit_guy 4y ago> But Bill Gates and cronies retain 100% ownership. NuScale is publicly traded. You can buy shares, the ticker is SMR. The majority owner (about 60%) in NuScale is Fluor Corporation [1], another publicly traded company (FLR). The top 10 Fluor owners are mutual funds, such as BlackRock, Vanguard and Fidelity [2] . If your 401(k) is managed by one of these funds, chances are you own shares in FLR too. I don't see how Bill Gates is involved in NuScale. [1] https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/press-releases/news-details/2021/NuScale-Power-the-Industry-Leading-Provider-ofTransformational-Small-Modular-Nuclear-Reactor-Technology-Announces-Plans-to-Go-Public-via-Merger-with-Spring-Valley-Acquisition-Corp/default.aspx https://newsroom.nuscalepower.com/press-releases/news-detail... [2] https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=FLR&subView=institutional https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...
- Ericson2314 4y agoThe state should still own a large chunk of it.
- kwere 4y agothe (US) state is too (politically) biased/volatile to manage even something that isnt basic science. look at Nasa. And btw this is an investment wich could create more economic activities and down the line tax revenue.
- Ericson2314 4y agoLook at the Tennessee Valley Authority. Our governments do have a lot of problems, so the solution is to make not formally a part of the state to get around a lot of bullshit.
- pfdietz 4y agoThis certifies NuScale's 50 MWe reactor. But the CFPP project has moved to the 77 MWe version, and as I understand it that has not been certified. UAMPS also has only 103 MWe of subscriptions out of 476 MWe (6 x 77 MWe).
- dqpb 4y agoHow long do they take to build?
- datatrashfire 4y agoMy problem with nuclear is the lack of a solution for waste. Geologic sequestration sounds like it could work, but it has been politically dead in water in the US. There are few success stories in this category internationally and lots of little nuclear waste depots. Some pose catastrophic risks to the communities they are stored in. The clean up efforts at these sites are often endless feast for government contractors way behind, insanely over budget. I want to see modular reactors succeed, but the prospect of more nuclear waste depots with no long term plan in the US comes of to me as brazenly irresponsible.
- shlant 4y ago> My problem with nuclear is the lack of a solution for waste Waste management is pretty much a solved problem [1][2] > Some pose catastrophic risks to the communities they are stored in "catastrophic" would have to be qualified here, and I think you are being hyperbolic, but essentially the only waste sites that have major risks are those from decades ago before we had good solutions. Nuclear is incredibly safe [3] 1. https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856?s=20&t=KRbamDzpe8PPimDwCXgIQg https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1550148385931513856?s=2... 2. https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1552655863751421955?s=20&t=qa-Fa3kcmHPCO0V3kWHUKg https://twitter.com/MadiHilly/status/1552655863751421955?s=2... 3. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- datatrashfire 4y agoI think you misunderstand my criticism. It's not that vitrification can't be done, its that efforts in the US to perform it are behind schedule and woefully inadequate to process the existing waste in US in a timely manner, let alone the waste from numerous additional plants. Despite decades of pubic debate, billions spent, we still cannot agree on where to put it. Plans to vitrify waste at Hanford are only barely reaching operation, more than a decade behind schedule. The plant won't be able to process all the waste on site when running at capacity until after 2100. Meanwhile 56 million gallons of high grade waste is slowly seeping into the water table of the Columbia River basin. My problem is with the lack of success in this area towards competently reducing risk and sequestering waste. It hardly seems like a solved problem when we our concrete implementation of a solution has yet to arrive.
- goindeep 4y agoMatt Ridley from The Rational Optimist opened my eyes to Nuclear and how the issues have been how we were almost too careful and too afraid to test and implement and so we are now decades behind nuclear reactor research and implementation.
- jbverschoor 4y agoIt’s sad that we keep needing war and threats to advance in technology. War is an enabler of gate approvals to innovation and development
- euroderf 4y agoSo, how much time and how many people (# trained/specialist, # non-specialist) do I need to steal the core and fence it to unnamed Eurasian wanna-be nuclear power ?
- vfclists 4y agoWhat of the Integral Fast Reactor which has the waste disposal issue licked? It seems no one wants to discuss the huge progress made in the design of nuclear reactors over the years. The idea that a technology which has been in development for 70 years hasn't improved enough to be practical is simply bollocks.
- KETpXDDzR 4y agoTo worry some people, the commission certifying this also downplayed the three miles incident. "However, the NRC faced the same problems in obtaining accurate information as the state, and was further hampered by being organizationally ill-prepared to deal with emergencies, as it lacked a clear command structure and did not have the authority either to tell the utility what to do or to order an evacuation of the local area." - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident