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> 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 di
by 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
- Galaxeblaffer 4y agobingo! it's crazy that people keep comparing this to wind turbines.
- aeyes 4y agoA problem with on-shore wind is that it is already getting hard to find more space for it in some European countries. You also can't put windmills in densely populated areas where most power is needed so you have to take energy transmission cost into account as well. If it can be demonstrated that these reactors are safe, you could put them almost anywhere.
- Galaxeblaffer 4y agothe number one problem with onshore wind is a capacity factor around 30% and on top of that you could have long periods with no wind at all.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoPeriods where wind operates below 5% capacity in Poland are really common. I've seen it once below 1%. When I write this it's 7,5% - below 10% for 14 hours already.
- pifm_guy 4y agoNobody in the developed world will allow a nuclear reactor to be built anywhere near their house... So, however safe these are, they'll still be relegated to 100+ miles from any big city. So the transmission costs will be similar to wind/solar.
- BlueTemplar 4y agoWhile the operational safety sounds excellent, I am worried about what a generalization of this kind of reactor would entail. Your typical reactor is under heavy surveillance and 200 (67?) times more powerful : we are very unlikely to "lose track" of the fuel. Let's say this becomes moderately popular and we soon have a million of them across the world (enough for about 10% of our today's energy needs)... who is going to keep track of all of them ?! The High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium required here is enriched between 5% and 20% compared to a conventional reactor using between 3% and 5% fuel. Because enriching from the natural 0.7% to 20% is 90% of the effort, 20% is considered to be the line separating civilian and military uses. And we're much closer to that limit with these reactors. I am baffled that this is not being even mentioned in the article, nor the pdf ? (I guess they are not particularly willing to disclose just how many of those would need to be gathered for the minimum 25 kg of 90% enriched Uranium for a bomb ?) And as safe as these might be under normal operation, how many decades for a forgotten abandoned one, exposed to the weather, to leak ? How much and what kind of radiation release can we expect ? (Carried by water to the closest steam I assume?)
- thinkmcfly 4y agoUh, you can't run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on wind turbines. That means that all the bodies of people that die without ventilators etc, during no wind days would have no chilled morgue to sit in, and would rot
- justatdotin 4y agoyou can run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on batteries. I think it's a standard thing for vital infrastructure to be backed by generators. big industrial consumers can factor their own specialised requirements for storage, backup.
- bobkazamakis 4y ago>Uh, you can't run life saving medical equipment or refrigerator service on wind turbines Man! If only there was some device that stored energy for later use!
- loeg 4y agoYou gotta include it in the cost figures, though.
- mikeyouse 4y agoWind has the distinct advantage compared to this tech in that it actually exists. I can buy a turbine tomorrow and have it online in a month or two.
- joebob42 4y agoSure, but that's a different and unrelated argument to the question of theoretical cost which is what was being discussed.
- mikeyouse 4y agoSure. This costs infinity because it doesn't exist and 100% wind based power generation would cost less than that, but more than a wind turbine by itself to include storage.
- c2h5oh 4y agoCurrent wholesale price of electricity in EU is 110-120 USD / MWh. 5 * 110 Euro * 24 hours * 365 days * 8 years planned service life = $38,533,000. If they can offer a price under 5M USD per MW they won't have problem finding buyers. This doesn't even account for savings for businesses that can consume most of that output - they save another 20-30% on transmission fees + there are several MW of waste heat as low temperature steam that can be used directly or indirectly in many industrial processes.
- XorNot 4y agoYeah dedicated units for large industry would be a huge buyer here: if you can hit the right price point, aluminium smelters in particular would be very interested customers I suspect.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Retric 4y agoThis thing only outputs hot water, you need a lot more equipment and people to turn that into useful power on the grid.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoFuel costs, maintenance, and operation would be over $2M. Normal energy prices are about half of what you quoted. It's TBD if they come back down to normal in the near future in the EU. You're looking at $18M in revenue. This thing will probably cost more than $10M to purchase, and then you need land, a grid-tie in, and permits. It would still work - but the numbers aren't going to look as good as wind & especially solar.
- rsj_hn 4y agoComparing the price of unreliable energy to reliable energy is like comparing the price of a junk bond with a treasury and wondering why the latter costs so much more. It costs more because when you turn it on you get a known and reliable source of power, day or night, cloudy or sunny, windy or quiet. That's why it costs more.
- masklinn 4y ago> I guess still quite sizeable given the heat output. Definitely not a single-family home device. I’d think the 5MWe would be a hint. Standard residential service drop is like 40kW.
- sbierwagen 4y ago"Big" there might be referring to physical size.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- BlueTemplar 4y agoI'm wondering, they say using sodium, and having tested heat pipes up to 800°C... but their schema shows sodium vapor... but sodium only boils at 900°C ?? So I guess they underpressurize these pipes ? That would make sense, since in a traditional liquid metal reactor, the boiling of the working fluid is instead a failure mode to be avoided at all costs (since boiling dramatically increases the pressure resulting in burst pipes), especially with sodium that burns on contact with the air, explodes on contact with water, oh and also is highly radioactive at that point (for a short time). They seem very sure of themselves, but I still wonder what kind of stresses are involved, and what does this mean for heat pipe longevity ? (and calling heat pipes with a phase changing working fluid "passive" still seems kind of wrong ?) EDIT : The relatively small amount of sodium probably matters a lot here ?
- thinkmcfly 4y agoStatic vs passive cooling, I think is what you're looking for here.
- jonstewart 4y agoHeat pipes are used in CPU coolers and work on the same principle. A small amount of liquid is in the pipe, at reduced pressure, which makes heat transfer very efficient. I suck at chemistry, but wiki clearly discusses advantages of sodium for heat transfer in nuclear reactors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor (tl;dr: safety margin from the large range of temps at which sodium is liquid; doesn't like to absorb neutrons, and isotopes aren't that problematic when it does).
- BlueTemplar 4y agoYes, but they use water. (Also reduced pressure means reduced density, which should in theory make heat transfer less efficient... except when phase changes are involved !) That reactor is a radically different design, operating at a much lower temperature, where sodium doesn't evaporate.
- 4y ago
- rgmerk 4y agoThey say they envisage delivery of the whole system on four trucks. Not single family home (unsurprisingly, the economics of very small scale nuclear are awful even ignoring the safety concerns), but night and day compared with conventional large nuclear reactors.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoIf you can get the heat out, no reason it couldn't be tiny. A hayabusa motorcycle engine can be tortured into producing 1MW mechanical from about 5MW thermal. The heat engine required to meet efficiency would likely be the limit (although I think TEGs might be getting cheaper). The main issue is unless you have a big pile of them, you need 1% of your population to be nuclear engineers and security.