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There 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
by rgmerk 4y ago
There 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.
- _iado 4y agoCould it be safe even with actively malicious people?
- Schroedingersat 4y ago..maybe. For a given definition of malicious. The flip side of the eye-wateringly expensive and inefficient fuel they're proposing is it's very hard to get the radioactive stuff out of the SiC shell, even with explosives. And getting it to go into thermal runaway would require some exotic materials that can out-last the SiC as it melts. Spreading tiny fuel pellets everywhere would still be horrible, but far more contained. The dangers of this would be more diffuse. Large amounts of high level waste compared to a conventional reactor, double the mining, fuel fabrication facilities that are one hopper jam away from going chernobyl. If it were accepted, the industry would get complacent about cracked pellets and Kr-85 or other hard to contain fission byproducts would slowly accumulate everywhere and we'd have to spend 50 years fighting misinformation about how radiation is good for you while it builds up irreversibly.
- moogly 4y agoAIUI, microreactors are not SMRs. The modularity of SMRs comes from being able to build the different modules in factories, but the SMR would still be assembled on-site inside a building/facility. Source: https://omegataupodcast.net/359-modern-fission-reactors/ https://omegataupodcast.net/359-modern-fission-reactors/ Westinghouse's current SMR design is IRIS, which is a PWR. They cancelled their previous design.
- Marsymars 4y agoThere are remote parts of Canada where solar is viable, and can save on lots of diesel fuel, but doesn’t do much in the winter. e.g. https://www.yukon-news.com/local-news/diesel-generators-go-quite-in-old-crow-as-the-sree-vyah-solar-project-replaces-their-need/ https://www.yukon-news.com/local-news/diesel-generators-go-q...