Posted on 08/19/2016 6:56:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On the horizon are U.S.-designed small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) that range from 50 megawatts to 300 megawatts electrical power output. Like renewables (wind and solar), SMRs produce no air pollution or global warming gases, but SMRs are also capable of generating base load electrical power on demand.
Almost 50 companies are creating designs for SMRs using 21st-century technology and enhanced features. These designs include modularity, efficient factory construction, rapid siting and exceptional safe operation. Very important is that SMRs are less expensive and easier and faster to site and build than conventional 1,200-megawatt nuclear plants. Reliance on renewables as now pursued by Germany has resulted in 37 cents per kilowatt-hour in U.S. dollars compared with France (75 percent nuclear base) at 17 cents per kilowatt-hour and Utah at 11 cents per kilowatt-hour.
U.S. electrical utilities have focused on large nuclear power reactors such as the 1,200-megawatt Westinghouse AP1000. Because of their size, complexity and multibillion-dollar cost, most utilities now avoid them. However, SMRs are factory built at great cost savings and assembled in modular clusters as needed and rapidly sited as electric generating capacity increases. Each SMR module can be operated independently of others to match operation coordinated with renewables' fluctuating duty cycle. To accommodate varying electrical power demand or refueling or maintenance outages, the SMR modules provide optimum electrical generation.
Most SMR development involves startup companies and is privately funded....
(Excerpt) Read more at beta.deseretnews.com ...
Hasn’t the Navy already built these?
I need a 50 megawatt modular plant for my anti-gravity craft.
[ There are 3 nuclear core meltdowns in Japan that will be dumping radioactive waste into the environment daily for decades (and have been doing so since March 2011). And yet, nuclear power is STILL being touted as “clean”???????!
Nuclear engineers are the first to admit the technology does not exist to clean up Fukushima but the “answer” is to forget about it and build something new? ]
Water/steam is a bad way to get the heat away from a reactor core and leads to complexity and all sorts of issues leading to meltdown...
The lies and incompetence on the part of the nuclear industry “professionals” exceed the complications introduced by water/steam as a heat vehicle.
Where’s my Mr. Fusion?
Unlike today's pressurized water reactor fueled by solid uranium-235 fuel rods, MSR's use commonly-found thorium-232 dissolved in molten fluoride salts as fuel and doesn't need the enormous expense of a overbuilt pressurized reactor vessel, either. Also, because the fuel is in liquid form already, there's no such thing as a "reactor meltdown."
Because of its very safe operation, that makes it possible for much smaller reactor buildings for the 50 to 250 MW size MSR's. And it could make it possible to locate a lot more power generation plants very close to the places the needed the most, like factories, larger computer server farms and urban areas. And that means a lot less reliance on expensive (and sometimes unreliable) long range power transmission across state lines.
The “new” thing is size of the SMR. SMR’s are small enough to be built in a factory, and then shipped to the site. Current commercial PWR’s are huge and have to be assembled on site.
Google “vogtle” to look at the AP1000 design. It's huge.
Mr. Bill Fusion. Oh no!
Sounds to me like we’re just continuing on with a bad idea. If we’re looking for small, scalable power generation, look to gas turbines.
“Making nuclear fuel is dirty and expensive.”
Uranium is currently around $45 per pound. Each pound contains roughly the energy of 500 tons of coal.
You do the math.
“Ironically the electricity used to enrich uranium is usually provided by conventional coal/gas plants.”
If common sense were to prevail and we generated more electricity using nuclear power, that wouldn’t be the case, would it?
“Sounds to me like we’re just continuing on with a bad idea. “
Nope.
“If we’re looking for small, scalable power generation, look to gas turbines.”
Gas is fine, but the supply is fairly limited. Soon, prices will start to climb again.
There is far more available energy in uranium and thorium.
The design of the Fukushima reactors is nearly half a century old. Newer designs are far safer.
Nuke engineers swore that it was impossible for them to fail and when three of them failed big time suddenly they started saying they were ‘old’ “ and pretending that there aren’t many others of the same design in operation all over the United States and in other countries right now.
“These devices are absolutely the way to go. Safe, clean, and extraordinarily versatile, a really distributed power grid, and not amenable to centralized control.”
Then they will be banned by the EPA. We cannot allow cheap, affordable, safe energy that decentralizes power and the EPA will protect us from this great danger.
Maybe Bill Nye can market “The Science Guy Micro Fission Reactor.”
Nuke engineers swore that it was impossible for them to fail and when three of them failed big time suddenly they started saying they were ‘old’ “ and pretending that there aren’t many others of the same design in operation all over the United States and in other countries right now.
His investors saw little opportunity to charge for it.
As Joe might say, You lie!
Time for you to dig out that VHS tape of "China Syndrome."
I have looked at some of his papers on this topic, from what I recall the idea had several points that didn’t match scientific fact to hid hypothesis. Though a good bit of his research was taken by the Fed., so we may never know the whole truth.
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