22 ms·
Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microreactor
- nwatson 4y agoAfter ethics reviews, send some prototypes to Ukraine this winter.
- worldsayshi 4y agoSounds like something you don't want Russians to target thought.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoUkraine has multiple traditional nuclear power plants running.
- nuccy 4y agoThe attacks of russians on Ukraine's electricity grid revealed a safety feature of the convenient nuclear power plants (at least those operated in Ukraine) - they cannot produce electricity while being alone in the grid (or in isolated pieces of the grid). If inflow of electricity fails the nuclear power plant switches to diesel generators and gradually decreases its power output going effectively into hibernation. Attacks of November 23 caused exactly that, all three nuclear power plants (excluding ZPP which is on temporarily occupied territory) were shut down since they lost incoming power [1]. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/23/russia-ukraine-war-at-a-glance-what-we-know-on-day-273-of-the-invasion https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/23/russia-ukraine...
- BlueTemplar 4y ago> Commercial deployment is targeted for 2027. (Sounds like the new fuel might be available sooner, but probably not for this winter?)
- jensenbox 4y agoI get that it makes and moves heat... What process is it using to create the electricity?
- ngcc_hk 4y agoThe only option is to put many of these to replace old plant. Any other is not feasible due to its nuclear. Even a small amount of bombing it can be used to threaten local or even there is anyway to hack dirty bomb threat to a city. Once security concern is in not just regulation, back to the hole. But if it is safer than mild one even if more expensive, it can still have some use.
- multiplegeorges 4y agoNorthern communities in Canada are a perfect application of this tech. Currently, they mostly burn diesel for power.
- jbm 4y agoThis sort of technology is something the provincial governments are interested in. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/nuclear-energy-alberta-ucp-small-scale-modular-reactors-government-of-canada-1.5677983 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/nuclear-energy-albert...
- yabones 4y agoMight also be good for concrete production, perhaps. Most cement plants burn loads of coal to heat up the limestone, producing loads of CO2 in the process. Not sure if this reactor could heat up the kiln to >1,000C. Seems like there's some interest in the UK, so perhaps this could be a good solution for on-site production in remote areas... https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/hinkley-points-nuclear-option https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/hinkley-poi...
- reverendbedford 4y agoSodium reactor outlet temperatures are around 550 C. There are other reactor concepts that come close to 1000 C, but it's a huge technical challenge.
- drjasonharrison 4y agoElectric heating?
- reverendbedford 4y agoThat works for some processes (making aluminum and more recently steel) but I'm not aware of any electrically heated processes for making concrete. Cheap, clean electricity could unlock a lot of things though.
- sebmellen 4y agoI love seeing innovative tech like this spring out of the Pittsburgh region… Once the nation’s capitol of industry innovation, maybe it can be again.
- riffic 4y agothe rust belt has good bones, as they say.
- AlbertCory 4y agoI had a couple trips to the Google building in the converted Nabisco factory there. They'd refinished the hardwood floors, but they left in the giant gouges that the heavy machinery had put there, as a reminder of the past.
- nyokodo 4y ago> maybe it can be again. If we can get the Jones Act repealed or heavily amended, maybe some long overdue riverine infrastructure maintenance and upgrades and we could watch the whole region flourish.
- kilolima 4y agoThis discussion has nothing to do with the Jones Act. Bot spam!
- halpmeh 4y agoHow would repealing the Jones Act help? By allowing more ships on the Allegheny River? If anything, I think Pittsburgh would have benefitted from a little protection before cheap foreign steel hollowed out the industrial base.
- nyokodo 4y ago> How would repealing the Jones Act help? By removing the restrictions that make riverine transport uncompetitive in many cases with trains and trucks. Without those restrictions sending goods by boat is far cheaper (and less carbon intensive) than the alternatives which would give industry in the entire Mississippi River system a boost in competitiveness. There’s a reason a lot of value add industries are located beside ports. The Jones Act effectively removed the likes of Pittsburgh from the list of port cities.
- Gravityloss 4y agoI feel that this reactor is too small for actual usage. It's about wind turbine sized. But better to err on this side, if you want the iteration speed up and start mass production. Future versions can always be scaled up.
- cjtrowbridge 4y agoThe keyword in Small Modular Reactor is Modular. 5mw is not "too small for actual usage." You can connect many of them together in one plant to produce however much power you want. Just like wind turbines, a typical design includes more than one.
- masklinn 4y agoSeriously, 5MWe is what, a few thousand homes? Low thousand if you need to plug in local commons and you’ve got lots of EVs around maybe. Alongside a few MWt to shed into district heating, that seems pretty nice in a distributed grid context. > Just like wind turbines, a typical design includes more than one. Wind farms are a thing because location is an issue, and there’s a lot of nimby-ism, so if you can plop down turbines you plop down a bunch. Though I guess nimby would also affect SMRs, location is way less of an issue, if you have space for a farm you might as well use a classical nuclear plant. Plus the capacity factor of nukes is way higher than turbines. Assuming SMRs follow the nuclear norm you don’t need to overbuild to compensate.
- pencilguin 4y agoWind farms are a thing because a wind turbine can only be so big: for more power, you put up more of them. They are so cheap because all the costs are transparent, there is noplace to bury wholly-legal graft. A big farm amortizes fixed project management cost. Capacity factor of nukes is not so much more than of wind turbines, though if you have a bunch of nukes, it would be rare to have many of the nukes down at once other than for urgent retrofits. Steam turbines are down a lot, so nukes are always built with two or more. But the main thing is that nukes cost far, far more than the wind farm that produces as much; or, a wind farm at the same price produces many times the power, with near zero lead time and possibly negative decommissioning cost. After their contribution to the grid gets large enough, you build out storage, which incrementally reduces the fraction of time you spend burning NG or, later, ammonia. A farm of small nukes would cost quite a bit more to build than a big nuke of the same capacity, because all the systems are duplicated throughout. On the up side, the farm might be built incrementally with much less of the graft always attached to monster public works; you might save 75% vs a big nuke just on that basis. If you could get the first one going early, its revenue might help pay for subsequent units. But whatever the heat source, anything with a steam turbine is just not competitive anymore. That is another reason why fusion is a dead end: it is just very hard to compete with zero opex.
- rx_tx 4y ago> The microreactor can generate 5 MW of electricity or 13 MW of heat from a 15 MW thermal core. Exhaust heat from the power conversion system can be used for district heating applications or low-temperature steam. They are aiming 8 years planned service life, and one novel thing is the use of heatpipes (like your CPU cooler) using liquid metal as a working fluid. They actually don't say how big it is, I guess still quite sizeable given the heat output. Definitely not a single-family home device.
- cjtrowbridge 4y agoIt's a shipping container, same type of footprint and install as the tesla battery packs. They have pictures and videos if you google it.
- BlueTemplar 4y ago4 trucks for the whole setup
- jansan 4y agoJust imagine the ragne of those trucks running on that "battery".
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoMy understanding is on-shore windmills cost about ~$1.5M and $50k in maintenance per year - last for 20 years - for 1MW. I'm skeptical this can come anywhere close to that. But if it's within an order of magnitude - it could replace old coal powerplants as they're decommissioned.
- beambot 4y agoApples & oranges: wind is an intermittent generator versus eVinci for base generation
- 4y ago
- ngvrnd 4y agoWow... Walt's Mill. My mom worked there, I have a photo of her standing above a fuel storage well... It used to be a test reactor with a channel of water through the core that they would send boats through to test samples of materials for radiation exposure effects.
- tohnjitor 4y agoI'm sure these boats were quite small yet I'm imagining an underground river with rafts crewed by technicians in mopp suits.
- devy 4y agoIn 1960, there was a meltdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaGdJdXnagQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaGdJdXnagQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_TR-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_TR-2
- keepquestioning 4y agoFinally some real innovation on here.
- foundajob 4y ago
- photochemsyn 4y agoIt's a liquid-sodium-cooled, graphite-core system with no need for pumps, aka 'passively cooled' via heat [edit] pipes. Output is: > "The microreactor can generate 5 MW of electricity or 13 MW of heat from a 15 MW thermal core. Exhaust heat from the power conversion system can be used for district heating applications or low-temperature steam." Control systems are kind of interesting: > "The only moving or mechanical parts in the reactor system are reactivity control drums, which manage the power level and allow absorber material to passively turn inward toward the core if power demand is reduced or lost, and turn a reflector material toward the core if demand increases automatically. Hence the term “nuclear battery.”" I'm generally not a nuclear advocate but if they've really managed to eliminate the need for active cooling, and have a robust system that can safely shut down with concerns about meltdown even without external power, that's a pretty big advance. Looks remarkably promising... keep your fingers crossed. (New nuclear tech hasn't had the greatest track record over the past several decades, i.e. pebble beds didn't work out etc.)
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoNot trying to be a pedant, but I think you might have a typo in the core of your point: > …, and have a robust system that can safely shut down with concern about meltdown Do you mean ‘without’?
- FrostKiwi 4y agoI think it's 'with', as in 'regarding'. "With the rising concerns around orange peel ethics, we put focus on creating a humane peeling device for fruits."
- largbae 4y agoI am intrigued by this concept and would like to learn more!
- photochemsyn 4y agooops left out a 'no' between with and concern.
- threads2 4y agohow micro is micro? how big is this thing?
- Empact 4y ago4 shipping containers > They envision the plant being delivered in four truckloads: the reactor container, the power conversion unit (an open-air Brayton Cycle system), an instrumentation and controls container and miscellaneous support and equipment (like a heat exchanger to capture waste heat for district heating).
- mkoubaa 4y agoReally cool to see this close to completion
- perihelions 4y ago- "the power conversion unit (an open-air Brayton Cycle system)" Isn't that essentially a jet engine?
- jakuboboza 4y agoPassive cooling sounds super turbo safe which is what we always seek in reactors. Yeah that would disrupt the market.
- Terretta 4y agoCuriously, Russia has the largest number of small nuclear reactors in the world, albeit legacy tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_small_nuclear_reactors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_small_nuclear_... https://defense-arab.com/vb/attachments/10536/ https://defense-arab.com/vb/attachments/10536/ This boat is online and puts out ~70 MW of electricity gross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Lomonosov
- i_am_proteus 4y agoOnly one of those is operating. Most are "conceptual design."
- Iwan-Zotow 4y agotable is outdated Three kinds are operating - 3 EGP, 2 KLT-40 and I think 6 RITM-200
- hallway_monitor 4y agoWow that's a lot of power and a lot of heat. The most unexpected thing is it can produce 240,000 cubic meters of freshwater a day as well!
- TheRealPomax 4y agoWhat a bizarre title. Either it is, and then "sees" makes no sense, it's a proven disruptor, or it's not, and it's just armchair self-congratulatory PR speak.
- Zigurd 4y agoGets more clicks than "They designed this thing and made all these claims but hit us back in 5 years when they actually run one fueled-up with enriched uranium."
- ddulaney 4y agoOr it’s indeterminate, which it is. They think it might be a disruptor, but they’re not sure yet. They see that potential, but they don’t have it yet.
- joexner 4y agoIt makes sense if you substitute "recognizes" for "sees". Westinghouse (well, Cameco/Brookfield Renewable) recognizes what a disruptive tech this could be, whereas others have overlooked it, maybe?
- perihelions 4y agoI don't know why people are enthused about "passive heat removal" for a reactor that's operating and generating electricity (as opposed to post-shutdown decay heat removal). That requirement rules out every possible type of fission reactor there is, other than extremely small ones with very low power densities (like OP). Forced convection is how you fit gigawatts of power in the volume of a small room; it's what makes nuclear fission practical at scale.
- titzer 4y agoGigawatt reactors do not fit in a small room. Even the reactor itself is the size of a large room. Then there is a huge amount of infrastructure around them, then enormous cooling towers. Forget about power density when you have sites measured in tens or hundreds of acres with 300 foot towers--ultimately heat has to be dissipated to the environment, and that takes space.
- perihelions 4y agoThe entire heat source, the active part of the core, very easily fits in a small room (at a mean power density somewhere around 100 MW/m^3 for water-cooled reactors). I'm talking about the difficultly of heat removal, not trying to minimize size or complexity or anything.
- titzer 4y agoSure, but you gotta consider the entire system, so adding the heat pumping system actually may decrease the overall power generated per unit of volume; at least, certainly increase cost and decrease reliability. I wonder if thousands of SMRs spread over an area wouldn't actually generate more power per acre.
- rgmerk 4y agoThere is no way in the world this is going to be economically competitive to connect to big electricity grids any time soon. Even taking into account the cost of extra transmission and storage (and to a certain extent, building extra storage, which is politically easier, reduces the amount of transmission you have to build), wind and solar are ridiculously cheap and trending cheaper long term, and you don't really run into the requirements for massive amounts of storage until the fraction of your power from VRE gets very, very high. Remote parts of Alaska, Canada etc face very very high power costs and solar isn't viable there (though wind might be depending on the site), so I can absolutely see the initial applications there.
- ttul 4y agoNot to mention a need for heating!
- jonstewart 4y agoThe article does not mention grid applications. In fact, it explicitly Alaska and Canada, and off-grid applications, like mines. So, don't think it's trying to promote the idea of cheap wholesale electricity in normal places, but, instead, reliable on-premise electricity in places where it's not so very easy to get.
- rgmerk 4y agoYep, absolutely. But there are plenty of other people, notably here on HN, who get very excited about grid-connected SMRs. It's also worth noting that the majority of people living without access to grid electricity are in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, places with much better (and much less seasonal) solar resources, and far less capacity to safely manage nuclear power. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-billion-people-without-access-to-electricity/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-billion-people-witho...
- masklinn 4y ago> and far less capacity to safely manage nuclear power. A common point of design (or at least hope) for SMR is for the design itself to be sealed and fail-safe, no operators and no management, when fuel runs your you replace the reactor and send to to the factory for refurb. Think smartphone, not lamps-based computer.
- pfdietz 4y agoA serious problem with this is scaling of operating costs. A 5 MWe reactor, operating at about 90% capacity factor and selling power at wholesale prices (maybe $0.03/kWh) will earn $1.2M/year. You need at least four employees to operate it (3 shifts, with a spare), and probably many more.
- mjlawson 4y agoI'm no expert here, but I wonder about the economics around the 13MW of heat that it outputs. There are certainly applications around the world where that could be hugely beneficial. Take Reykjavik[1] for example. How much are they paying for their system now on a yearly basis? How would they like an extra 5MW of energy along with it? [1] https://vahterus.com/resources/cases/10-mw-heat-pump-system-to-boost-a-volcanic-district-heating-solution-in-reykjavik/ https://vahterus.com/resources/cases/10-mw-heat-pump-system-...
- zeristor 4y agoI’d guess they have enough geothermal power for the time being.
- jonstewart 4y agoTFA even mentions Alaska and Saskatchewan...
- danans 4y ago> I wonder about the economics around the 13MW of heat that it outputs. I'll take a stab, if only to start a discussion: 13MW is about 450MBTU/hr. Natural gas is about $7/MBTU. Assuming 80% efficiency of gas to heat conversion, you would need 562MBTU/hr, or a cost of about $80/hour. If the heat from this nuclear device is sold at the same price per unit heat, it will make $80*8760=$700800/year. If read correctly, the reactor can make either 5MW of electricity or 13MW of heat, but not both, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense to sell the 13MW of heat. At best sell some of the waste 8MW to make a few extra marginal bucks.
- 4y ago
- ramshanker 4y agoI guess Elon Musk will be interested in taking one of these things to Mars. He is almost getting the transport capability part done.
- system2 4y agoProbably after he is done jerking around with twitter.
- system2 4y agoI am not very knowledgeable about nuclear reactors but wouldn't it be concerning to have tiny nuclear reactors everywhere in the city? Doesn't this increase the potential dangers?
- wmf 4y agoThese are not for cities and the "danger" of nuclear power is overstated.
- rswail 4y agoThe "danger" of nuclear power is not their day-to-day operations, it is the nature of the waste product (both in terms of its decay to safe levels and the ongoing storage requirements) and the use of said waste materials in the relatively simple production of "dirty bombs" that just require standard explosives to distribute said radioactive waste around a large area. So the danger is not overstated, it's that the promoters of nuclear energy refuse to accept the complete lifecycle of nuclear power, including both the fuel generation (uranium mining is environmentally damaging, leaving tailings and polluted water), fuel management (moving radioactive fuel around the community/environment), and fuel disposal (unsolved).
- amluto 4y agoIf the price is right and medium size communities could get their acts together, something like this could potentially disrupt the entire grid model. In California, regardless of what wholesale electricity costs, the retail cost is something like $200/MWh more than could be considered reasonable. Put another way, the utility (PG&E) is charging an immense premium. Normally, displacing PG&E would be impractical: a. The actual transmission system is a phenomenally large capital investment developed over many decades. You can’t just VC up a new electric grid in a developed area. And the incumbent mostly owns the existing infrastructure. b. Regulation, good and bad. It’s possible to sell power to the utility for a reasonable price per MWh. But one can’t easily sell to the utility’s customers. But this reactor is small! 5 MW could serve maybe 1000 expensive homes in an expensive area without an enormous transmission system. Anyone trying to disrupt the incumbent utility with something like this has $200/MWh of inefficiency to exploit. $24k per day of operation will offset a decent amount of capital cost and regulatory effort to get the electricity to customers. Put another way, a wealthy community could buy a few of these, figure out local distribution, and ditch the incumbent utility. This could be fantastic.
- psadri 4y agoI like the idea but not sure if wealthy homeowners would want to a nuclear reactor in the vicinity of their homes. It would have to be proven out over a couple of decades of incident-free operation before it becomes acceptable.
- zbrozek 4y agoLos Altos Hills resident here. Sign me up for one in my yard. There's an empty lower acre begging to do something useful.
- kuschku 4y ago> There's an empty lower acre begging to do something useful. How about building housing there? As long as house prices are as high as they are today, that should be the main priority.
- _ea1k 4y agoIt would only take ~2 of those to power a decent sized charging site for electric semi trucks.
- vagrantJin 4y agoA bit off topic but Factorio buffs will find this microreactor eerily familiar.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoUsing TRISO fuel, which is (best case) half as fuel efficient as a PWR and costs $40-500/MWh just for the fuel https://web.mit.edu/nse/pdf/researchstaff/forsberg/FHR%20Point%20Design%2014-002%20UCB.pdf https://web.mit.edu/nse/pdf/researchstaff/forsberg/FHR%20Poi...
- bayesian_horse 4y agoReminder: Microreactors mean more radioactive waste, not less. No country has solved the safe long term storage radioactive waste. No, not even Finland, even though they are close. Expanding nuclear power, especially through microreactors means expanding access to extremely toxic radioactive material. And make sure the government is stable (for the next few hundred years) and there's no war in the area.
- throw827474737 4y agoPlease don't spoil the party. We have been lazy for so long and absolutely don't want to cut back on luxury or use the cleaner solutions that producing nuclear waste with expensive subsidies and all the other downsides is now cool again and full green! Big innovaton here, that counts!
- Orothrim 4y agoReminder: solid radioactive waste is many times more safe than pumping waste into the air we all breathe. Fossil fuels kill many people per year by their waste and radioactive waste is an easy to solve problem comparatively speaking. Additionally some SMRs are designed to be thrown out wholesale because they are already the container for the nuclear waste. Finally, radioactive waste can be used as a power source.
- goodpoint 4y agoYes, "and everybody clapped". The reality is that widespread nuclear reactors are not safely manageable in today's society. First find a solution to prevent all wars and social unrest now and it the future, then we can talk.
- bayesian_horse 4y agoThe Russians found that when they put their artillery pieces near a nuclear power plant, the Ukrainians don't shoot back. Funny that. And almost every time there is a cruise missile attack the nuclear power plants have to go offline as a precaution (not even because of them getting targeted though, which also may happen in the future).
- naeq 4y agoAt 2:34 camera captured reactor failure
- locallost 4y agoThe decisive thing is always going to be cost. Thus far, reducing capacity has made nuclear plants faster to build, but the outcome was more expensive per MWh [1]. This then forced future plants to again increase in scale, but it again made them too slow and expensive to build, with huge budget overruns. We're now back to small modular, but if the electricity they produce is again even more expensive, it will offset any other benefit. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275673955_The_forgotten_history_of_small_nuclear_reactors https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275673955_The_forgo...
- LatteLazy 4y agoThe advantage of small reactors is that you can make them in factories (mass production). The disadvantages are that you lose all on site scale and you are very vulnerable to a single part failure or design floor. Also miniaturising things is non-trivial. Then you still have all the other issues around nuclear (waste and perception) Given the cost of nuclear, you need that advantage to be much much bigger than the disadvantages. If someone can do that, they'll make (serious) money. But it's a >100bnUSD project. So I don't think there are many corps who will take that sort of risk given the uncertainty.
- thelittleone 4y ago"I want to start a business that builds garden lights, fridges and nuclear microreactors".
- UltraViolence 4y agoThis device is mostly aimed at the military and maybe the industrial market (think about a chemical plant or large factory). When our military invade yet another country they now don't need to haul diesel fuel to keep the lights on.
- djmips 4y agoSeems perfect for mining... crypto mining that is!