3 ms·

From Admiral Rickover's 'Paper Reactor' memo (1953)[1]: "An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: 1. It is

From Admiral Rickover's 'Paper Reactor' memo (1953)[1]: "An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: 1. It is simple. 2. It is small. 3. It is cheap. 4. It is light. 5. It can be built very quickly. 6. It is very flexible in purpose (“omnibus reactor”) 7. Very little development is required. It will use mostly “off-the-shelf” components. 8. The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now." The whole paper is well worth reading, IMHO: [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html

pydry 2y ago
Nobody has ever made these things cheap though.
- laverya 2y ago
  I think you missed point 8, "The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now."
- mattkrause 2y ago
  The punchline is Point #8!
preisschild 2y ago
Does "small" and "light" really matter outside naval reactors? Nuclear power plants seem to be more economic the bigger they are. That's why PWRs, BWRs and CANDUs were initially far smaller than newer ones. You have the same overhead as with smaller reactors, but you produce more energy, which means the energy is cheaper.
- pjc50 2y ago
  They take longer to build, which means the cost overruns are worse, and because you build so few of them the learning curve doesn't kick in to reduce costs. Similar philosophy to SpaceX raptor engines; build lots of them to drive down the per-unit cost. This has not yet worked for reactors.
- cykros 2y ago
  This is true for water cooled reactors, which these are, thanks to a regulatory environment going back to the Nixon administration that mostly makes other designs unavailable, as the cost of safety measures is quite high, but comes down with scale on a per-watt basis. The exciting thing about small modular reactors is with alternative designs, such as molten salt designs and alternative fuels such as thorium, where the risk of meltdown and hydrogen explosion are not an issue, so this cost-of-safety factor falls away heavily. Molten salt DOES bring with it issues of corrosion, so it's not a panacea, but the idea is that some of these alternative designs can bring the power generation closer to where the power is used, which raises a variety of benefits, including being able to potentially use the heat generated in a useful manner in addition to the electricity, rather than solely as something to be safely dissipated. Also, of course, you get rid of the big single points of failure and end up with a more resilient power grid. I can't speak to this particular company's offering but I am glad to at least see some interest in the technology growing, as nuclear at this point is the only realistic way to both even consider replacing existing fossil fuel use as well as powering the increased energy demands of the future particularly in light of rapidly developing emerging markets and much heavier power draw from technologies such as generative large language models (so called "AI").
- bborud 2y ago
  The world needs sealed, passively safe reactors that can be mass produced (at least in the tens of thousands), last for some number of years (10-15-20) and then gets shipped back to have its fuel reprocessed at some appropriately secured central location. Traditional nuclear power plants are a risky proposition today because they are large, complex, expensive, and they take a long, long time to complete. Not least because they futz around with refueling and cooling spent fuel onsite. The long completion time means they are hard to finance, you will have one or more (financial) black swan events (eg financial crisis, wars) during the construction period, and there is no such thing as someone who has prior experience building a power plant before starting because the same power plant is never built twice in consecutive generations. Even the "serial produced" ones are different. The only way you can make nuclear cheaper is to get the manufacturing and commissioning time down to 1-2 years and no more than 3 years. Which means they have to be small and as simple as possible. Size is only relevant as a means to achieve simplicity. Mobility and widely distributed operation are pointless goals in themselves. That might be a possibility to investigate later, but it is not important initially. If someone starts talking about a mobile power plant they have 100% the wrong focus. First there must be a power plant. And when you have one, you probably really, really want to bolt them down so they don't go missing.
- jaystraw 2y ago
  so are ICEs
pjc50 2y ago
I can't believe how well that nails the problems of the nuclear industry .. from 1953! By comparison, solar power costs 1/100th (99% fall) of what it did back then. https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120 https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-112...
cushychicken 2y ago
Rickover had a well earned reputation for being absolutely savage to folks who didn’t deliver on his behalf. Hence, this memo. XD

pydry 2y ago

Nobody has ever made these things cheap though.

laverya 2y ago
I think you missed point 8, "The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now."
mattkrause 2y ago
The punchline is Point #8!

preisschild 2y ago

Does "small" and "light" really matter outside naval reactors? Nuclear power plants seem to be more economic the bigger they are. That's why PWRs, BWRs and CANDUs were initially far smaller than newer ones. You have the same overhead as with smaller reactors, but you produce more energy, which means the energy is cheaper.

pjc50 2y ago
They take longer to build, which means the cost overruns are worse, and because you build so few of them the learning curve doesn't kick in to reduce costs. Similar philosophy to SpaceX raptor engines; build lots of them to drive down the per-unit cost. This has not yet worked for reactors.
cykros 2y ago
This is true for water cooled reactors, which these are, thanks to a regulatory environment going back to the Nixon administration that mostly makes other designs unavailable, as the cost of safety measures is quite high, but comes down with scale on a per-watt basis. The exciting thing about small modular reactors is with alternative designs, such as molten salt designs and alternative fuels such as thorium, where the risk of meltdown and hydrogen explosion are not an issue, so this cost-of-safety factor falls away heavily. Molten salt DOES bring with it issues of corrosion, so it's not a panacea, but the idea is that some of these alternative designs can bring the power generation closer to where the power is used, which raises a variety of benefits, including being able to potentially use the heat generated in a useful manner in addition to the electricity, rather than solely as something to be safely dissipated. Also, of course, you get rid of the big single points of failure and end up with a more resilient power grid. I can't speak to this particular company's offering but I am glad to at least see some interest in the technology growing, as nuclear at this point is the only realistic way to both even consider replacing existing fossil fuel use as well as powering the increased energy demands of the future particularly in light of rapidly developing emerging markets and much heavier power draw from technologies such as generative large language models (so called "AI").
bborud 2y ago
The world needs sealed, passively safe reactors that can be mass produced (at least in the tens of thousands), last for some number of years (10-15-20) and then gets shipped back to have its fuel reprocessed at some appropriately secured central location. Traditional nuclear power plants are a risky proposition today because they are large, complex, expensive, and they take a long, long time to complete. Not least because they futz around with refueling and cooling spent fuel onsite. The long completion time means they are hard to finance, you will have one or more (financial) black swan events (eg financial crisis, wars) during the construction period, and there is no such thing as someone who has prior experience building a power plant before starting because the same power plant is never built twice in consecutive generations. Even the "serial produced" ones are different. The only way you can make nuclear cheaper is to get the manufacturing and commissioning time down to 1-2 years and no more than 3 years. Which means they have to be small and as simple as possible. Size is only relevant as a means to achieve simplicity. Mobility and widely distributed operation are pointless goals in themselves. That might be a possibility to investigate later, but it is not important initially. If someone starts talking about a mobile power plant they have 100% the wrong focus. First there must be a power plant. And when you have one, you probably really, really want to bolt them down so they don't go missing.
jaystraw 2y ago
so are ICEs

pjc50 2y ago

I can't believe how well that nails the problems of the nuclear industry .. from 1953! By comparison, solar power costs 1/100th (99% fall) of what it did back then. https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120 https://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-112...

cushychicken 2y ago

Rickover had a well earned reputation for being absolutely savage to folks who didn’t deliver on his behalf. Hence, this memo. XD