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Someone should build a factory which builds small nuclear plants. These one-off nuclear plants are just a distraction. The ultimate solution is to make floating

by Geee 3y ago

Someone should build a factory which builds small nuclear plants. These one-off nuclear plants are just a distraction. The ultimate solution is to make floating and 99% automatic nuclear plants. This makes it possible to mass manufacture them in a massive factory with low unit costs, ship them all over the world, and run them scalably with low operating costs. Make millions of them. Include waste-management solution as a service.

floxy 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power
jjordan 3y ago
That's the motivation behind small nuclear reactors (SMRs). Compared to the larger models, these are more "set it and forget it" type of systems, and with it comes the ability to build them much more rapidly than a traditional plant. Check out NuScale Power's VOYGR SMR, as they are pretty far along in the process.
- Geee 3y ago
  NuScale is cool, but their reactors don't float. Floating is necessary so anyone can just order one and get it shipped, just by pressing a button on their website. And building on land requires all kinds of permissions.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    Most of the world is landlocked, besides, you're not going to dock your precious nuclear plant in the middle of a busy harbor one accident, tsunami or other event away from a serious problem. Big reactors have both an efficiency and a security benefit over smaller ones. But they're still not cost effective which is why the biggest question with nuclear plants always is 'how much subsidy can we get'.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Couldn't a floating plant be built to be inerently better tsunami proof than land based reactors? In deeper waters a tsunami isn't very noticeable and we already have proven power cable technology from wind power far out at sea.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        Tsunamis are chaotic in nature, you can't really know ahead of time what kind of Tsunami's are possible just like we don't really have upper limits on what ocean waves can be like. All we have is evidence from those events that we've observed. The ocean is an incredibly destructive environment, hard to appreciate from a land based perspective. Ships are basically in continuous maintenance to keep them working and anything that isn't made of a rust proof material is in for a very rough time. Reactors on various vessels have entirely different working parameters from those on shore and there the consumer is right next to the reactor. But in the case that you sketch you'd have a floating reactor tied to a stationary power grid that somehow is resilient to the worst that the ocean can throw at it. I just can't see that working, even in the short term, let alone over the service life of a typical nuclear reactor. Ship-borne nuclear reactors have been used for emergency power, but that's not a structural solution and it is also a very expensive one (compared to land based generation that power is quite expensive). So as soon as possible the emergency use is discontinued and it's back to land based solutions. Off-shore windpower shows the complexity of ocean based power generation quite well and they have a much simpler safety situation, maintenance schedule, degree of complexity and so on. And even there the challenges are far more serious than the land based equivalent. Some work has been done on floating wind farms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_wind_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_wind_turbine But the economics are not comparable to those of anchored turbines (either off-shore on on-shore). Likely something similar would hold for nuclear power, that off-shore nuclear power would by default be far more expensive than on-shore nuclear power and that is already economically not feasible without massive subsidies.
      - prawn 3y ago
        I know very little about nuclear plants, but ignoring the usual risks, could it be anchored to the sea floor? Is the floating element necessary? Would there be cooling advantages also?
- 1980phipsi 3y ago
  Is this important? https://spectrum.ieee.org/small-modular-reactors-nuscale https://spectrum.ieee.org/small-modular-reactors-nuscale
- SahAssar 3y ago
  > small nuclear reactors (SMRs) To be clear, that acronym is for "Small Modular Reactors". Just in case anyone else was confused or thought it was a NATO/OTAN thing.
- jiveturkey42 3y ago
  Westinghouse AP300 is further along as a proven solution than nuscale
rightbyte 3y ago
> Make millions of them. What? Millions of reactors, more or less unguarded, sinkable by storms and what not. The proposition is insane.
- Geee 3y ago
  Make them unsinkable, or otherwise safe whether they are over or under the water.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    That is just silly. Unsinkable? For real? This push and consent for nuclear have come out of nowhere. It is manufactured consent.
  - croes 3y ago
    I think terror organization like the Hamas would love small moveable reactors
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    You mean like the Titanic. That might work.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    Well sure, if we can make completely safe in a completely uncontrolled environment(floating in the ocean), small, mass producable by automation and operated with no staff fission reactors, everything would be fine. Currently any one of these features is either still in its infancy or not even being attempted at all. Expecting a reactor with all of them to show up in time to compete with renewable and conventional nuclear seems fanciful at best.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I think it is actually pretty interesting. I wonder if there could be enough passive cooling to simply dump the reactor core in the case of overheating, providing a failsafe against potential meltdown.
MattGaiser 3y ago
I have been hearing about small scale nuclear since I was a kid. Still waiting for someone to successfully build one. Also, this proposal is challenging due to issues with nuclear proliferation. Nuclear plants will need guards.
- fodkodrasz 3y ago
  One idea is that the reactor is small and mass produced, not the power plant! So at a site similar to one where you have 2-4-6 big reactors now you would put 5-10-15 SMRs, with a similar large scale infrastructure (HV grid, transformers, security, water treatment, maybe cooling towers, etc.), but you can get going sooner as the reactors are standardized, with type-permits ready, which helps in the design and paperwork of the complete site, and the site might be able get going sooner at lower capacity, starting to generate revenue earlier.
audunw 3y ago
There’s reasons nuclear plants has always been built as huge monolithic structures. Power production scales with containment vessel volume, but many of the costs scale with the area. It’s inherently cheaper to build big. Small modular reactors is a huge bet that if you really manage to scale up production to huge numbers, it’ll offset the inherent cost disadvantage with building small reactors. It remains to be seen if that’s the case. I’m quite sceptical, but worth a shot.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Small modular reactors is what we need most. Wind and solar covers most land based electric needs, but a small modular reactor is still the only feasible answer for ocean shipping I've seen. (sail boats do exist, but they have many disadvantages vs an engine)
  - arrosenberg 3y ago
    No way are we giving nuclear reactors to container ships. It makes more sense to build big, safe nuclear plants near airports and ports to manufacture fuel from air using the nearly limitless power from the nukes.
    - titzer 3y ago
      The US Navy fields dozens of nuclear vessels. Has since 1954. No meltdowns. Only two ships ever lost, and not due to reactor issues. Subs can go for decades without refueling.
      - tapland 3y ago
        The US navy doesn't usually run that many ships that haven't been seaworthy for decades. Guess if any private shipping companies do.
      - ciabattabread 3y ago
        They’re the US Navy. You wanna have a civilian ship powered by a nuclear reactor sailing past Somalia? Or pull an Exxon Valdez?
hedora 3y ago
This is sort of how France's nuclear industry works. They made dozens of on-land plants, all based on the same design. The design is something like 50 years old now, but the result was extremely economically competitive and reliable, since the parts were interchangeable (so they could benefit from economies of scale), and workers and training were transferable between plants. As I understand it, the US has never built the same design more than once (or maybe a few times), so each plant has to be engineered and manufactured from scratch, and all the training, logistics, maintenance schedules, etc, are one-off projects.
zapnuk 3y ago
NuScale tried that, doesn't seem to work (yet). - Costs way more than anticipated - resulting energy costs per kWh more expensive than renewables - small nuclear reactors found to create more waste https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-ceo-defends-modular-nuclear-plants-after-project-cancellation-2023-11-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-ceo-defends-...
andbberger 3y ago
this came very close to happening in the 70s but was, ironically, killed by the 73 oil crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_Power_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_Power_Systems
- Geee 3y ago
  Very interesting. I've heard of the russian project, but not this.
  - acidburnNSA 3y ago
    I made it onto NPR's Science Friday talking about this very story. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-powe... https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html

by Geee 3y ago

floxy 3y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuScale_Power

jjordan 3y ago

That's the motivation behind small nuclear reactors (SMRs). Compared to the larger models, these are more "set it and forget it" type of systems, and with it comes the ability to build them much more rapidly than a traditional plant. Check out NuScale Power's VOYGR SMR, as they are pretty far along in the process.

Geee 3y ago
NuScale is cool, but their reactors don't float. Floating is necessary so anyone can just order one and get it shipped, just by pressing a button on their website. And building on land requires all kinds of permissions.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Most of the world is landlocked, besides, you're not going to dock your precious nuclear plant in the middle of a busy harbor one accident, tsunami or other event away from a serious problem. Big reactors have both an efficiency and a security benefit over smaller ones. But they're still not cost effective which is why the biggest question with nuclear plants always is 'how much subsidy can we get'.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Couldn't a floating plant be built to be inerently better tsunami proof than land based reactors? In deeper waters a tsunami isn't very noticeable and we already have proven power cable technology from wind power far out at sea.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      Tsunamis are chaotic in nature, you can't really know ahead of time what kind of Tsunami's are possible just like we don't really have upper limits on what ocean waves can be like. All we have is evidence from those events that we've observed. The ocean is an incredibly destructive environment, hard to appreciate from a land based perspective. Ships are basically in continuous maintenance to keep them working and anything that isn't made of a rust proof material is in for a very rough time. Reactors on various vessels have entirely different working parameters from those on shore and there the consumer is right next to the reactor. But in the case that you sketch you'd have a floating reactor tied to a stationary power grid that somehow is resilient to the worst that the ocean can throw at it. I just can't see that working, even in the short term, let alone over the service life of a typical nuclear reactor. Ship-borne nuclear reactors have been used for emergency power, but that's not a structural solution and it is also a very expensive one (compared to land based generation that power is quite expensive). So as soon as possible the emergency use is discontinued and it's back to land based solutions. Off-shore windpower shows the complexity of ocean based power generation quite well and they have a much simpler safety situation, maintenance schedule, degree of complexity and so on. And even there the challenges are far more serious than the land based equivalent. Some work has been done on floating wind farms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_wind_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_wind_turbine But the economics are not comparable to those of anchored turbines (either off-shore on on-shore). Likely something similar would hold for nuclear power, that off-shore nuclear power would by default be far more expensive than on-shore nuclear power and that is already economically not feasible without massive subsidies.
    - prawn 3y ago
      I know very little about nuclear plants, but ignoring the usual risks, could it be anchored to the sea floor? Is the floating element necessary? Would there be cooling advantages also?
1980phipsi 3y ago
Is this important? https://spectrum.ieee.org/small-modular-reactors-nuscale https://spectrum.ieee.org/small-modular-reactors-nuscale
SahAssar 3y ago
> small nuclear reactors (SMRs) To be clear, that acronym is for "Small Modular Reactors". Just in case anyone else was confused or thought it was a NATO/OTAN thing.
jiveturkey42 3y ago
Westinghouse AP300 is further along as a proven solution than nuscale

rightbyte 3y ago

> Make millions of them. What? Millions of reactors, more or less unguarded, sinkable by storms and what not. The proposition is insane.

Geee 3y ago
Make them unsinkable, or otherwise safe whether they are over or under the water.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  That is just silly. Unsinkable? For real? This push and consent for nuclear have come out of nowhere. It is manufactured consent.
- croes 3y ago
  I think terror organization like the Hamas would love small moveable reactors
- jacquesm 3y ago
  You mean like the Titanic. That might work.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  Well sure, if we can make completely safe in a completely uncontrolled environment(floating in the ocean), small, mass producable by automation and operated with no staff fission reactors, everything would be fine. Currently any one of these features is either still in its infancy or not even being attempted at all. Expecting a reactor with all of them to show up in time to compete with renewable and conventional nuclear seems fanciful at best.
s1artibartfast 3y ago
I think it is actually pretty interesting. I wonder if there could be enough passive cooling to simply dump the reactor core in the case of overheating, providing a failsafe against potential meltdown.

MattGaiser 3y ago

I have been hearing about small scale nuclear since I was a kid. Still waiting for someone to successfully build one. Also, this proposal is challenging due to issues with nuclear proliferation. Nuclear plants will need guards.

fodkodrasz 3y ago
One idea is that the reactor is small and mass produced, not the power plant! So at a site similar to one where you have 2-4-6 big reactors now you would put 5-10-15 SMRs, with a similar large scale infrastructure (HV grid, transformers, security, water treatment, maybe cooling towers, etc.), but you can get going sooner as the reactors are standardized, with type-permits ready, which helps in the design and paperwork of the complete site, and the site might be able get going sooner at lower capacity, starting to generate revenue earlier.

audunw 3y ago

There’s reasons nuclear plants has always been built as huge monolithic structures. Power production scales with containment vessel volume, but many of the costs scale with the area. It’s inherently cheaper to build big. Small modular reactors is a huge bet that if you really manage to scale up production to huge numbers, it’ll offset the inherent cost disadvantage with building small reactors. It remains to be seen if that’s the case. I’m quite sceptical, but worth a shot.

bluGill 3y ago
Small modular reactors is what we need most. Wind and solar covers most land based electric needs, but a small modular reactor is still the only feasible answer for ocean shipping I've seen. (sail boats do exist, but they have many disadvantages vs an engine)
- arrosenberg 3y ago
  No way are we giving nuclear reactors to container ships. It makes more sense to build big, safe nuclear plants near airports and ports to manufacture fuel from air using the nearly limitless power from the nukes.
  - titzer 3y ago
    The US Navy fields dozens of nuclear vessels. Has since 1954. No meltdowns. Only two ships ever lost, and not due to reactor issues. Subs can go for decades without refueling.
    - tapland 3y ago
      The US navy doesn't usually run that many ships that haven't been seaworthy for decades. Guess if any private shipping companies do.
    - ciabattabread 3y ago
      They’re the US Navy. You wanna have a civilian ship powered by a nuclear reactor sailing past Somalia? Or pull an Exxon Valdez?

hedora 3y ago

This is sort of how France's nuclear industry works. They made dozens of on-land plants, all based on the same design. The design is something like 50 years old now, but the result was extremely economically competitive and reliable, since the parts were interchangeable (so they could benefit from economies of scale), and workers and training were transferable between plants. As I understand it, the US has never built the same design more than once (or maybe a few times), so each plant has to be engineered and manufactured from scratch, and all the training, logistics, maintenance schedules, etc, are one-off projects.

zapnuk 3y ago

NuScale tried that, doesn't seem to work (yet). - Costs way more than anticipated - resulting energy costs per kWh more expensive than renewables - small nuclear reactors found to create more waste https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-ceo-defends-modular-nuclear-plants-after-project-cancellation-2023-11-14/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nuscale-ceo-defends-...

andbberger 3y ago

this came very close to happening in the 70s but was, ironically, killed by the 73 oil crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_Power_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_Power_Systems

Geee 3y ago
Very interesting. I've heard of the russian project, but not this.
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  I made it onto NPR's Science Friday talking about this very story. https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-power-plants/ https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/floating-nuclear-powe... https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html https://whatisnuclear.com/offshore-nuclear-plants.html