4 ms·
Not small, modular, or new. But certainly a decent reactor. They clearly want something to slot in against the GE BWRX-300. But they would probably be better se
by beefman 3y ago
Not small, modular, or new. But certainly a decent reactor. They clearly want something to slot in against the GE BWRX-300. But they would probably be better served by going all-in on their eVinci reactor, which is small, modular, and new
https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/evinci-microreactor https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/evinci-mi...
- jeffbee 3y agoFascinating that any superficially for-profit entity would want to compete against something that has never earned one single dollar from revenue production. I find the whole industry quite unusual. It is possible that there are engineers who started at GE (or Hitachi) decades ago working on the simplified BWR, worked on it their whole careers, and retired without anyone ever building one.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThere were people that worked on flight their whole lives without an airplane ever being built. That's the way it goes sometimes. Fusion energy will be a reality at some point. Tons of people worked their entire lives on it and retired and died without seeing a reactor built.
- m463 3y agoInteresting acceleration of technology. It's been possible for decades for people to build/buy and fly their own planes. Nowadays it's possible for an individual to put up a satellite or get a chip made. I wonder if in the future kids will achieve fusion.
- foota 3y agoI realize this isn't what you meant, but fusion is readily achievable, and has been done by children: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson. It's energy positive fusion that's hard.
- zamnos 3y agoIn a similar vein, cold fusion's also possible, it's just not energy-positive, and not a power source. But the mere mention of those two words together means no one read the rest of that sentence.
- foota 3y agoSorry, it looks like your comment might have gotten cut off, was there more after "similar vein"? :-)
- beefman 3y agoWho worked on flight their whole lives without ever building a plane, 50 years after the airplane had been demonstrated? Even in fusion, people are usually building machines. It seems to me the "paper reactor" situation in fission is rather unique. The only precedent I can think of is perhaps the abandonment of shipbuilding in Ming China.
- grecy 3y agoFriends worked at NASA with people who went their entire careers without ever having a project build any hardware...
- beefman 3y agoIt's a shame your comment was downvoted, jeffbee. I thought it was insightful and I upvoted it. There has indeed been tremendous loss of knowledge with two (and counting) generations of engineers working on this technology and retiring with their work mostly lost to time, both at our national labs and in the private sector.
- DarkNova6 3y agoLots and lots of Venture Capital coming to this direction will sway management quite fast.
- xattt 3y agoWhat would security requirements for a real-life installation be like? The concept photo shows a plain-Jane barbed wire.