5 ms·

When you say "nuclear", do you mean all forms of fission reactors? Or do you mean today's inferior designs? Your comment makes sense in the context of convent

When you say "nuclear", do you mean all forms of fission reactors? Or do you mean today's inferior designs? Your comment makes sense in the context of conventional light-water reactors. However, there exist more advanced reactor designs that are essentially meltdown-proof.

kuhewa 4y ago
How close are they to commercial implementation
- devonkim 4y ago
  The small nuclear reactor designs by NuScale are commercially viable and are going to be approved by the nuclear regulatory commission rather soon. Thorium isn’t as important as the small and modular aspects. Also Gen IV and breeder reactors are basically perfectly viable commercially if it was held to the same kind of scrutiny as most other power sources whether it’s coal or solar. But politically it’s not viable which is expressed by being so hard to finance with long time scales that investors simply don’t have the patience and nobody can raise the capital worthwhile to bother trying. It’s very much a chicken-egg dynamic impeding its viability similar to what popular renewables faced for different reasons for several decades. Note that South Korea and France both have large operational nuclear power that is rather cheap to deploy because they basically copy-paste the same proven design and processes again and again. South Korea in particular has been under constant threat of attack by its neighbors for basically over a thousand years now yet went with nuclear decades ago. Comparatively, Switzerland didn’t choose nuclear for reasons I can’t quite remember even though they are fully capable technologically and in terms of process / bureaucracy able to manage the systems perfectly safely. Unsure about France’s reasoning but it’s difficult to compare power costs between France and neighboring Germany in good faith comparisons of energy policy either due to how different their electrical grid needs are.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    NuScale is extremely heavily subsidized, both in development (50%) and initial deployments (100%), by US taxpayers. It is absolutely uncompetitive, without.
- agentultra 4y ago
  There are several that will be deployed in Canada over the next few years [0] and the government seems committed to investing in SMR technology [1] [0] https://x-energy.com/media/news-releases/x-energy-canada-and-simsa-collaborate-to-support-the-potential-deployment-of-xe-100-small-modular-reactors https://x-energy.com/media/news-releases/x-energy-canada-and... [1] https://smrroadmap.ca/ https://smrroadmap.ca/

kuhewa 4y ago

How close are they to commercial implementation

devonkim 4y ago
The small nuclear reactor designs by NuScale are commercially viable and are going to be approved by the nuclear regulatory commission rather soon. Thorium isn’t as important as the small and modular aspects. Also Gen IV and breeder reactors are basically perfectly viable commercially if it was held to the same kind of scrutiny as most other power sources whether it’s coal or solar. But politically it’s not viable which is expressed by being so hard to finance with long time scales that investors simply don’t have the patience and nobody can raise the capital worthwhile to bother trying. It’s very much a chicken-egg dynamic impeding its viability similar to what popular renewables faced for different reasons for several decades. Note that South Korea and France both have large operational nuclear power that is rather cheap to deploy because they basically copy-paste the same proven design and processes again and again. South Korea in particular has been under constant threat of attack by its neighbors for basically over a thousand years now yet went with nuclear decades ago. Comparatively, Switzerland didn’t choose nuclear for reasons I can’t quite remember even though they are fully capable technologically and in terms of process / bureaucracy able to manage the systems perfectly safely. Unsure about France’s reasoning but it’s difficult to compare power costs between France and neighboring Germany in good faith comparisons of energy policy either due to how different their electrical grid needs are.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  NuScale is extremely heavily subsidized, both in development (50%) and initial deployments (100%), by US taxpayers. It is absolutely uncompetitive, without.
agentultra 4y ago
There are several that will be deployed in Canada over the next few years [0] and the government seems committed to investing in SMR technology [1] [0] https://x-energy.com/media/news-releases/x-energy-canada-and-simsa-collaborate-to-support-the-potential-deployment-of-xe-100-small-modular-reactors https://x-energy.com/media/news-releases/x-energy-canada-and... [1] https://smrroadmap.ca/ https://smrroadmap.ca/