6 ms·

And a contrasting article from IEEE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-o

by hwillis 1mo ago

And a contrasting article from IEEE: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuclear-reactors https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-forgotten-history-of-small-nuc... > Samuel B. Morris, the general manager and chief engineer of Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power, traveled all the way to Geneva in 1955 to attend the first International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy. There, he made a case for small reactors, arguing that because the “number of small units…is many times the number of large units,” there could be “economy in development and repetitive manufacture” of the small units. > But nothing in the history of small nuclear reactors suggests that they would be more economical than full-size ones. In fact, the record is pretty clear: Without exception, small reactors cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance. For me, SMRs don't pass the smell test. Buying one big plot of land for a reactor, building one power interconnect, having a localized water impact is way easier and cheaper than many. Even if its cheaper to build small reactor vessels, MANY of the other costs become more expensive in larger numbers. Costs that you can ignore while you're just building a prototype. If it's so much cheaper to build multiple small reactors, just build one big plant with 24 small reactors. Thing is the nuclear reactor part is only 10-15% of the plants full cost: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...

tastyfreeze 1mo ago
SMR proposals still use one plot of land. The plant is just built to house multiple reactors.
arpinum 1mo ago
SMR is driven by funding, insurance, and regulation. China doesn't have these issues and builds conventional at a great price. China is building 37 reactors, only 4-5 are SMR-type units, and are larger at 600MW. The rest are standard PWR, and the 40+ in planning are dominating by standard PWR. Regulatory risk is too high, building too infrequent to understand costs, funding for first-of-its-kind is too hard for nuclear in most countries. SMR makes it fundable. New designs give the hope that regulatory burdens can be lowered.
- bryanlarsen 1mo ago
  China's nuclear production is only growing in an absolute sense. As a share of production, it's dropping, from a very low level of 4%. China is building other power types far faster than nuclear.
- DanTheManPR 1mo ago
  This is an important point: in a lot of ways, SMRs are a strictly worse than 1000MW plant. The potential financial benefits come from all the other factors you mentioned. I would rather have a "worse" nuclear power plant that actually gets built.
  - brennanpeterson 1mo ago
    Why? It then proves nuclear is uneconomical? Regulatory arbitration like this serves nothing? Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more nuclear, but bad nuclear is not in fact better than none.
    - arpinum 1mo ago
      It gives evidence the viability of nuclear is a political choice. China is using proven designs and delivering a good price for base load.
  - matthewdgreen 1mo ago
    The hope of SMR is that it can be cost-effective at the same level that other factory-produced power sources are. If that's not on the table, then large-scale nuclear deployment mostly isn't going to happen.
mayama 1mo ago
> Even if its cheaper to build small reactor vessels, MANY of the other costs become more expensive in larger numbers. There is no way SMR could beat solar+battery power cost even now. With sodium and other batteries projected to reduce storage cost, it is even more unlikely that SMR could be price competitive in future grids. SMR is the only way that dying western nuclear industry could attempt to deal with ballooning compliance and finance costs and hope for revival. China or India doesn't have this compliance cost and still build conventional nuclear. Even for the SMR usecase that got funding recently, mega datacenter electricity, there is new geothermal power companies getting funding and are transitioning from pilot projects to production. Some are using tech that is already being used in oil fracking industry for decades, so new geothermal tech scaling up has far less roadblocks technology and compliance wise. So other than military and mobile civil applications like nuclear icebreaker, I don't see the chance of SMR succeeding anywhere else.
- bryanlarsen 1mo ago
  To a first approximation, China does not build nuclear power. Nuclear's share of power production in China is 4% and dropping. It seems to me that the main reason China keeps building a relatively tiny amount of nuclear is strategic. Reasons like ensuring they never forget how and ensuring they always have buildable designs so that if something changed they could ramp up the program. And probably even more likely: nuclear expertise is important to the country's military.
  - DennisP 1mo ago
    But coal is still 49%. The whole point of nuclear in a carbon-free, mostly-renewable grid is to avoid needing enormous amounts of storage and overproduction. That's a need that doesn't come up when you're still half fossil. If you want to decarbonize as fast as possible, it makes sense to focus on rolling out wind/solar/battery as fast as possible for now, but keep developing nuclear technology to cover the last bit where it starts getting especially expensive to replace fossil with renewables without losing reliable power. That's exactly what China appears to be doing. They're not just building a few reactors, they're also the world leaders in developing various GenIV designs, like molten salt reactors.
briffle 1mo ago
> If it's so much cheaper to build multiple small reactors, just build one big plant with 24 small reactors. That is literally the plan with several designs like NuScale (and I think TerraPower). The plan with NuScale is to ship the reactors on rail or barge, and then truck it in the last few miles. So they cost savings is in not having to custom desgin the actual components for each site, and build them on site. Standard reactor, standard monitoring systems, standard control room able to monitor multiple reactors, etc. Plus, when you have 12 of them onsite in one large area, you can take one offline for refueling, and still produce power with the rest of them.
- pfdietz 1mo ago
  NuScale infamously failed to get their reactor funded in Utah (UAMPS and the CFPP), it was just too expensive. Costs kept rising, large utilities declined to sign up, and in the end those utilities remaining were going to hit the contractual off ramp so it was just cancelled. I have some links to minutes of municipal utility meetings in Idaho Falls that showed the wheels coming off (even though there was great local support for the effort.) Their design requires considerably more steel and concrete per MW(e) than a large conventional PWR power plant. You don't do civil construction in a factory, and that's where much of the cost is. Their design appears to have it roots in the (false) idea that what was holding back nuclear was perception of safety, rather than cost.
  - bryan0 1mo ago
    > Their design appears to have it roots in the (false) idea that what was holding back nuclear was perception of safety, rather than cost. And why do you think they cost so much? Because people need to believe they are safe from catastrophic failure
    - derriz 1mo ago
      Large scale civil engineering projects will always cost more than simply installing stuff that comes almost fully assembled from a factory (solar, wind, battery or small/medium gas turbines). Opex will always be much higher for a generation facility which requires 850 FTE specialist employees to operate (US average per plant) compared to the minimal requirements for on-site employees for utility scale solar or wind facilities. Generation tech which requires no fuel or hazardous waste handling and storage also has an obvious cost advantage. None of these factors have anything to do with “need to believe”.
throw0101d 1mo ago
> For me, SMRs don't pass the smell test. Buying one big plot of land for a reactor, building one power interconnect, having a localized water impact is way easier and cheaper than many. Some things would depend on the specific location and the grid around it: The Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick may be 'overkill' because when it goes down every few years for inspections/retooling, there's little other redundancy available. SMRs would be useful for that regional grid: install 3-4 and one can go down with less fuss. In (e.g.) Poland there were small/medium coal-fired generation stations near coal mines. If the mines are now empty (or retired for climate change), then the grid connections could be reused for SMRs on an existing generation site: less need to find a new site and build new power pylons, etc.
gwbas1c 1mo ago
There's a political issue. Just look at how hard it's been to protest all the new gas plants that came up over the last ~20 years. The reason is that we built many small gas plants, instead of a handful of large ones. It divided up the protesters to the point where they couldn't work together. When we built less, but larger, nuclear power plants, they're easier to protest. If we can make SMRs economical, it makes it significantly harder to protest.
- hwillis 1mo ago
  > Just look at how hard it's been to protest all the new gas plants that came up over the last ~20 years. People have been talking about SMRs being the economic future for over 70 years. It has not happened because it not true.
- agarwaen163 1mo ago
  The people protesting nuclear honestly shouldn't be allowed to vote if they claim they're clean energy due to the apparent lack of critical thought. Seriously, if you're an actual engineer or scientist, this statement is self evident.
nradov 1mo ago
Security costs are also an obstacle. Any nuclear reactor requires 24×7 armed security and that's largely a fixed cost regardless of power output. You need almost as many guards for a small reactor as a large one.

by hwillis 1mo ago

tastyfreeze 1mo ago

SMR proposals still use one plot of land. The plant is just built to house multiple reactors.

arpinum 1mo ago

SMR is driven by funding, insurance, and regulation. China doesn't have these issues and builds conventional at a great price. China is building 37 reactors, only 4-5 are SMR-type units, and are larger at 600MW. The rest are standard PWR, and the 40+ in planning are dominating by standard PWR. Regulatory risk is too high, building too infrequent to understand costs, funding for first-of-its-kind is too hard for nuclear in most countries. SMR makes it fundable. New designs give the hope that regulatory burdens can be lowered.

bryanlarsen 1mo ago
China's nuclear production is only growing in an absolute sense. As a share of production, it's dropping, from a very low level of 4%. China is building other power types far faster than nuclear.
DanTheManPR 1mo ago
This is an important point: in a lot of ways, SMRs are a strictly worse than 1000MW plant. The potential financial benefits come from all the other factors you mentioned. I would rather have a "worse" nuclear power plant that actually gets built.
- brennanpeterson 1mo ago
  Why? It then proves nuclear is uneconomical? Regulatory arbitration like this serves nothing? Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more nuclear, but bad nuclear is not in fact better than none.
  - arpinum 1mo ago
    It gives evidence the viability of nuclear is a political choice. China is using proven designs and delivering a good price for base load.
- matthewdgreen 1mo ago
  The hope of SMR is that it can be cost-effective at the same level that other factory-produced power sources are. If that's not on the table, then large-scale nuclear deployment mostly isn't going to happen.

mayama 1mo ago

> Even if its cheaper to build small reactor vessels, MANY of the other costs become more expensive in larger numbers. There is no way SMR could beat solar+battery power cost even now. With sodium and other batteries projected to reduce storage cost, it is even more unlikely that SMR could be price competitive in future grids. SMR is the only way that dying western nuclear industry could attempt to deal with ballooning compliance and finance costs and hope for revival. China or India doesn't have this compliance cost and still build conventional nuclear. Even for the SMR usecase that got funding recently, mega datacenter electricity, there is new geothermal power companies getting funding and are transitioning from pilot projects to production. Some are using tech that is already being used in oil fracking industry for decades, so new geothermal tech scaling up has far less roadblocks technology and compliance wise. So other than military and mobile civil applications like nuclear icebreaker, I don't see the chance of SMR succeeding anywhere else.

bryanlarsen 1mo ago
To a first approximation, China does not build nuclear power. Nuclear's share of power production in China is 4% and dropping. It seems to me that the main reason China keeps building a relatively tiny amount of nuclear is strategic. Reasons like ensuring they never forget how and ensuring they always have buildable designs so that if something changed they could ramp up the program. And probably even more likely: nuclear expertise is important to the country's military.
- DennisP 1mo ago
  But coal is still 49%. The whole point of nuclear in a carbon-free, mostly-renewable grid is to avoid needing enormous amounts of storage and overproduction. That's a need that doesn't come up when you're still half fossil. If you want to decarbonize as fast as possible, it makes sense to focus on rolling out wind/solar/battery as fast as possible for now, but keep developing nuclear technology to cover the last bit where it starts getting especially expensive to replace fossil with renewables without losing reliable power. That's exactly what China appears to be doing. They're not just building a few reactors, they're also the world leaders in developing various GenIV designs, like molten salt reactors.

briffle 1mo ago

> If it's so much cheaper to build multiple small reactors, just build one big plant with 24 small reactors. That is literally the plan with several designs like NuScale (and I think TerraPower). The plan with NuScale is to ship the reactors on rail or barge, and then truck it in the last few miles. So they cost savings is in not having to custom desgin the actual components for each site, and build them on site. Standard reactor, standard monitoring systems, standard control room able to monitor multiple reactors, etc. Plus, when you have 12 of them onsite in one large area, you can take one offline for refueling, and still produce power with the rest of them.

pfdietz 1mo ago
NuScale infamously failed to get their reactor funded in Utah (UAMPS and the CFPP), it was just too expensive. Costs kept rising, large utilities declined to sign up, and in the end those utilities remaining were going to hit the contractual off ramp so it was just cancelled. I have some links to minutes of municipal utility meetings in Idaho Falls that showed the wheels coming off (even though there was great local support for the effort.) Their design requires considerably more steel and concrete per MW(e) than a large conventional PWR power plant. You don't do civil construction in a factory, and that's where much of the cost is. Their design appears to have it roots in the (false) idea that what was holding back nuclear was perception of safety, rather than cost.
- bryan0 1mo ago
  > Their design appears to have it roots in the (false) idea that what was holding back nuclear was perception of safety, rather than cost. And why do you think they cost so much? Because people need to believe they are safe from catastrophic failure
  - derriz 1mo ago
    Large scale civil engineering projects will always cost more than simply installing stuff that comes almost fully assembled from a factory (solar, wind, battery or small/medium gas turbines). Opex will always be much higher for a generation facility which requires 850 FTE specialist employees to operate (US average per plant) compared to the minimal requirements for on-site employees for utility scale solar or wind facilities. Generation tech which requires no fuel or hazardous waste handling and storage also has an obvious cost advantage. None of these factors have anything to do with “need to believe”.

throw0101d 1mo ago

> For me, SMRs don't pass the smell test. Buying one big plot of land for a reactor, building one power interconnect, having a localized water impact is way easier and cheaper than many. Some things would depend on the specific location and the grid around it: The Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick may be 'overkill' because when it goes down every few years for inspections/retooling, there's little other redundancy available. SMRs would be useful for that regional grid: install 3-4 and one can go down with less fuss. In (e.g.) Poland there were small/medium coal-fired generation stations near coal mines. If the mines are now empty (or retired for climate change), then the grid connections could be reused for SMRs on an existing generation site: less need to find a new site and build new power pylons, etc.

gwbas1c 1mo ago

There's a political issue. Just look at how hard it's been to protest all the new gas plants that came up over the last ~20 years. The reason is that we built many small gas plants, instead of a handful of large ones. It divided up the protesters to the point where they couldn't work together. When we built less, but larger, nuclear power plants, they're easier to protest. If we can make SMRs economical, it makes it significantly harder to protest.

hwillis 1mo ago
> Just look at how hard it's been to protest all the new gas plants that came up over the last ~20 years. People have been talking about SMRs being the economic future for over 70 years. It has not happened because it not true.
agarwaen163 1mo ago
The people protesting nuclear honestly shouldn't be allowed to vote if they claim they're clean energy due to the apparent lack of critical thought. Seriously, if you're an actual engineer or scientist, this statement is self evident.

nradov 1mo ago

Security costs are also an obstacle. Any nuclear reactor requires 24×7 armed security and that's largely a fixed cost regardless of power output. You need almost as many guards for a small reactor as a large one.