6 ms·

>commercially operating And struggling, propped up by taylor-made laws and public money. >how have so many smart people and companies been duped into seriousl

by Arodex 4mo ago

>commercially operating And struggling, propped up by taylor-made laws and public money. >how have so many smart people and companies been duped into seriously considering SMR technology if SMRs apparently break the laws of thermodynamics? Never said they break the laws of thermodynamics. They are just inefficient and will never be more efficient than alternatives such as... Bigger nuclear reactors. Or solar. And how long have you been out there? Have you never seen investors dumping and wasting billions in dead-ends? Never seen a mania before? Nuclear attracts clever people, but it isn't smart nor wise.

jkman 4mo ago
>'taylor-made' Says it all, doesn't it
vablings 4mo ago
I think you have a misunderstanding of what a SMR is supposed to be. Nuclear power plants are eye watering levels of expensive. The require massive scale and cost with lengthy approvals and requirements, the fundamental idea of SMRs is to move that cost and approvals into a smaller scale so that multiple standard units can be produced and deployed in a turnkey situation, they still will be expensive but the time to deploy and cost will be significantly reduced. We also know SMRs work very well, considering the majority of the US Navy is powered entirely with SMRs and have been for a very long time. Off the top of my head ship power has been exported to local areas for disaster relief Solar is absolutely fantastic and your average person should not be hawking at solar for your home to offset your power bill. The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night. I don't think the likes of Westinghouse, Siemens, Rolls Royce and GE are duped. They are trying to solve a very hard problem!
- Arodex 4mo ago
  >The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night. Ok, question: for the cost of one nuclear power plant, how many batteries can you have? For the cost of the R&D of one next generation nuclear reactor design, how many next generation battery and solar panels technologies can you develop?
  - slibhb 4mo ago
    This is such a silly argument. Battery and solar technologies are progressing regardless of people building nuclear. It's simply not the case that we can stop investing in nuclear and use that money to accelerate battery/solar. The best energy strategies are all-of-the-above.
    - Arodex 4mo ago
      This isn't a silly argument, this is a problem of allocation of resources. We could have had mass solar deployment since the 70s. We chose not to, and allocate the money elsewhere. Nuclear will take away billions in public money, put it into the hands of nuclear industries, to get electricity at twice the going rate, maybe, in twenty years. A white elephant and a waste of effort.
      - hollerith 4mo ago
        Can you explain how that would have worked with the much less efficient and much more expensive solar panels available in the 70s?
        Arodex 4mo ago
        All the R&D and industrial capacity building we have done since the 70s could have been accelerated if we had invested in it as much as we invested in nuclear, or oil, or gas, or coal. With public money. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-government-rigs-the-market-in-favor-of-fossil-fuels/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-g...
      - vablings 4mo ago
        That's exactly the point of SMRs. Do away with the huge capital allocation of public funds to overspend and overrun on infrastructure projects.
      - slibhb 4mo ago
        We don't live in a command economy. Nuclear and solar both great and our only stance should be encouraging both.
- bryanlarsen 4mo ago
  I think you have a misunderstanding of economies of scale. There are two ways of achieving economies of scale: 1. make things bigger 2. make more of them Making things bigger generally is more effective when n is small. You need fewer sites, fewer approvals, each of the steps in the process is done fewer times. When n is large, you can build and optimize a factory for them and achieve economies of scale that way. Nuclear plants got large to take advantage of economies of scale because n is small. Nobody's building millions or even thousands of SMR's.
- crote 4mo ago
  > We also know SMRs work very well, considering the majority of the US Navy is powered entirely with SMRs And what's their cost per MWh? Considering they are fueled by highly-enriched uranium: are you okay with most of the world being handed the capability to build nukes?
  - vablings 4mo ago
    > And what's their cost per MWh? We do not know but its likely expensive >Considering they are fueled by highly-enriched uranium: are you okay with most of the world being handed the capability to build nukes? There are SMR designs that do not use highly-enriched uranium. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69b2f41497f6fef21f687b43/Justification_decision_on_the_Rolls-Royce_SMR_designed_by_Rolls-Royce_SMR_Ltd.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69b2f41497f6f... " The RR SMR uses PWR technology and industry standard LEU fuel and builds on operational experience from existing PWR reactors." I cite this as RR is the most advanced out of all the other companies working on this afaik
john_strinlai 4mo ago
>Never said they break the laws of thermodynamics. true, you said "gaslight thermodynamics", which i have no idea what that means, so i took a guess at what you were implying. >never be more efficient than alternatives such as... Bigger nuclear reactors. is efficiency really the only metric to be considered? i feel like available space, availability of alternatives, time to complete construction, etc. are worthwhile to consider. >And how long have you been out there? Have you never seen investors dumping and wasting billions in dead-ends? Never seen a mania before? considering the length of time and sheer number of people, companies, and governments worldwide considering/investing in SMR tech it seems unlikely to be a mania. but i am not an expert. you are talking like you are one, which is why i am asking questions.
- Arodex 4mo ago
  >i feel like available space, time to complete construction All of these favor again bigger reactors. >considering the length of time and sheer number of people, companies, and governments considering/investing in SMR tech it seems unlikely to be a mania. All of the Swiss energy companies are asking to be bailed out in advance of the investment in nuclear.
  - john_strinlai 4mo ago
    >All of these favor again bigger reactors. how does having less available space favor a bigger reactor? and how is constructing a bigger reactor faster than constructing a smaller one?
    - cauch 4mo ago
      Just a guess (I'm not the previous user), but I guess you need to look at the space _per GWh_? If a big nuclear reactor takes 10x more space but has 20x more capacity, then it means not having much space favors the big nuclear reactor rather than building 10 small ones that will take twice more space. (and same for the time)
      - 4mo ago
TheDudeMan 4mo ago
Efficiency is not the problem. We have plenty of nuclear fuel.
- Arodex 4mo ago
  Money doesn't grow on trees.
  - TheDudeMan 4mo ago
    Which is why we need to lower the cost of the reactors.

by Arodex 4mo ago

jkman 4mo ago

>'taylor-made' Says it all, doesn't it

vablings 4mo ago

I think you have a misunderstanding of what a SMR is supposed to be. Nuclear power plants are eye watering levels of expensive. The require massive scale and cost with lengthy approvals and requirements, the fundamental idea of SMRs is to move that cost and approvals into a smaller scale so that multiple standard units can be produced and deployed in a turnkey situation, they still will be expensive but the time to deploy and cost will be significantly reduced. We also know SMRs work very well, considering the majority of the US Navy is powered entirely with SMRs and have been for a very long time. Off the top of my head ship power has been exported to local areas for disaster relief Solar is absolutely fantastic and your average person should not be hawking at solar for your home to offset your power bill. The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night. I don't think the likes of Westinghouse, Siemens, Rolls Royce and GE are duped. They are trying to solve a very hard problem!

Arodex 4mo ago
>The problem with solar is that you need power 24/7 and solar will not make power in the night. Ok, question: for the cost of one nuclear power plant, how many batteries can you have? For the cost of the R&D of one next generation nuclear reactor design, how many next generation battery and solar panels technologies can you develop?
- slibhb 4mo ago
  This is such a silly argument. Battery and solar technologies are progressing regardless of people building nuclear. It's simply not the case that we can stop investing in nuclear and use that money to accelerate battery/solar. The best energy strategies are all-of-the-above.
  - Arodex 4mo ago
    This isn't a silly argument, this is a problem of allocation of resources. We could have had mass solar deployment since the 70s. We chose not to, and allocate the money elsewhere. Nuclear will take away billions in public money, put it into the hands of nuclear industries, to get electricity at twice the going rate, maybe, in twenty years. A white elephant and a waste of effort.
    - hollerith 4mo ago
      Can you explain how that would have worked with the much less efficient and much more expensive solar panels available in the 70s?
      - Arodex 4mo ago
        All the R&D and industrial capacity building we have done since the 70s could have been accelerated if we had invested in it as much as we invested in nuclear, or oil, or gas, or coal. With public money. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-government-rigs-the-market-in-favor-of-fossil-fuels/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/5-hidden-ways-the-g...
    - vablings 4mo ago
      That's exactly the point of SMRs. Do away with the huge capital allocation of public funds to overspend and overrun on infrastructure projects.
    - slibhb 4mo ago
      We don't live in a command economy. Nuclear and solar both great and our only stance should be encouraging both.
bryanlarsen 4mo ago
I think you have a misunderstanding of economies of scale. There are two ways of achieving economies of scale: 1. make things bigger 2. make more of them Making things bigger generally is more effective when n is small. You need fewer sites, fewer approvals, each of the steps in the process is done fewer times. When n is large, you can build and optimize a factory for them and achieve economies of scale that way. Nuclear plants got large to take advantage of economies of scale because n is small. Nobody's building millions or even thousands of SMR's.
crote 4mo ago
> We also know SMRs work very well, considering the majority of the US Navy is powered entirely with SMRs And what's their cost per MWh? Considering they are fueled by highly-enriched uranium: are you okay with most of the world being handed the capability to build nukes?
- vablings 4mo ago
  > And what's their cost per MWh? We do not know but its likely expensive >Considering they are fueled by highly-enriched uranium: are you okay with most of the world being handed the capability to build nukes? There are SMR designs that do not use highly-enriched uranium. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69b2f41497f6fef21f687b43/Justification_decision_on_the_Rolls-Royce_SMR_designed_by_Rolls-Royce_SMR_Ltd.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69b2f41497f6f... " The RR SMR uses PWR technology and industry standard LEU fuel and builds on operational experience from existing PWR reactors." I cite this as RR is the most advanced out of all the other companies working on this afaik

john_strinlai 4mo ago

>Never said they break the laws of thermodynamics. true, you said "gaslight thermodynamics", which i have no idea what that means, so i took a guess at what you were implying. >never be more efficient than alternatives such as... Bigger nuclear reactors. is efficiency really the only metric to be considered? i feel like available space, availability of alternatives, time to complete construction, etc. are worthwhile to consider. >And how long have you been out there? Have you never seen investors dumping and wasting billions in dead-ends? Never seen a mania before? considering the length of time and sheer number of people, companies, and governments worldwide considering/investing in SMR tech it seems unlikely to be a mania. but i am not an expert. you are talking like you are one, which is why i am asking questions.

Arodex 4mo ago
>i feel like available space, time to complete construction All of these favor again bigger reactors. >considering the length of time and sheer number of people, companies, and governments considering/investing in SMR tech it seems unlikely to be a mania. All of the Swiss energy companies are asking to be bailed out in advance of the investment in nuclear.
- john_strinlai 4mo ago
  >All of these favor again bigger reactors. how does having less available space favor a bigger reactor? and how is constructing a bigger reactor faster than constructing a smaller one?
  - cauch 4mo ago
    Just a guess (I'm not the previous user), but I guess you need to look at the space _per GWh_? If a big nuclear reactor takes 10x more space but has 20x more capacity, then it means not having much space favors the big nuclear reactor rather than building 10 small ones that will take twice more space. (and same for the time)
    - 4mo ago

TheDudeMan 4mo ago

Efficiency is not the problem. We have plenty of nuclear fuel.

Arodex 4mo ago
Money doesn't grow on trees.
- TheDudeMan 4mo ago
  Which is why we need to lower the cost of the reactors.