Posted on 01/27/2020 9:28:47 PM PST by BenLurkin
Mini nuclear stations can be mass manufactured and delivered in chunks on the back of a lorry, which makes costs more predictable.
Rolls-Royce is leading a consortium to build small modular reactors (SMRs) and install them in former nuclear sites in Cumbria or in Wales. Ultimately, the company thinks it will build between 10 and 15 of the stations in the UK.
They are about 1.5 acres in size - sitting in a 10-acre space. That is a 16th of the size of a major power station such as Hinkley Point.
SMRs are so small that theoretically every town could have its own reactor - but using existing sites avoids the huge problem of how to secure them against terrorist attacks.
In the past few years, major nuclear projects have been abandoned as Japanese companies Toshiba and Hitachi pulled out because they could not get the required funding.
And the construction of Hinkley Point in Somerset could cost £3bn more than was expected, in an echo of the row over the rail mega-project HS2.
"The trick is to have prefabricated parts where we use advanced digital welding methods and robotic assembly and then parts are shipped to site and bolted together," said Paul Stein, the chief technology officer at Rolls-Royce.
He said the approach would dramatically reduce the cost of building nuclear power sites, which would lead to cheaper electricity.
Rolls-Royce is hoping to overcome the cost barrier by selling SMRs abroad to achieve economies of scale.
Its critics have warned that SMRs will not be ready in substantial numbers until the mid 2030s, by which time electricity needs to be carbon-free in the UK already to meet climate change targets.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Lucas - Prince of Darkness.
Nothing radical in the design which is a good thing.
One of the problems with existing reactors is after a scram, it takes about 2 days to cool down sufficiently to be truly “shut down”
You need the cooling pumps working 24-7 for those two days or things will start to go bad.
This is what caused the problems in Japan.
Smaller reactor gives you a much shorter cool-down cycle.
Eliminating every coal fired plant in the UK is a fart in the wind compared to what’s happening in China.
That said, I do like the idea of small modular reactors.
I think this is a great idea, and it should have been done years ago. Instead of one big huge reactor that is hard to control if there is a problem, divide the huge source into many more smaller easier to handle and control sources.
Yep, rather than satisfy the load with one huge hard to control source, crowd source it to more smaller easier to control sources.
I hope they work a little better than their Trent turbofans.
As long as they are from orbit just to be sure. :)
A large warship is the equivalent of a small town, except the town does not have to be propelled from place to place. A reactor smaller than a one-car garage can keep it running for years on end, and is typically serviced and maintained by well trained twenty-somethings. Safety and efficiency. Economy will follow with volume of production.
USSR satellites were nuclear powered because they lagged in solar cell technology. I wonder how those rectors worked? I heard they were small and worked really well.
It’s about time! Submarine sized nuclear reactors could easily power ships, railroad locomotives, and even semi-trucks if downsized just a bit. Anyone pushing “zero carbon” technology knows deep down that it will NEVER happen unless nuclear power is used.
Since it is a PWR type with solid fuel you can use the data at the page below as it is the same proportianality for a big and a small reactor.
https://www.radioactivity.eu.com/site/pages/Reactor_Shutdown.htm
i.e. for a 400 MWe with a 1200 MWth reactor after 1 sec it is 7 % or 84 W heat, after 1 min 60 MW, after 1 h it is 18 MW, a day 7.2 MW etc.
Ok, that’s the funniest thing I have seen today
Thanks you
Lucas used to build refrigerators.
Which is why the English drink their beer warm.
Fukushima was caused by 20 years of criminally negligent maintenance.
Those aren't reactors, not in the sense you mean. There's no fission, they just harness the heat produced by radioactive decay. Same way the Voyager space probes were powered (for 43 years and counting).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
>> Anyone pushing “zero carbon” technology knows deep down that it will NEVER happen unless nuclear power is used.
Many pushing zero carbon don’t know this at all because they have no knowledge of basic thermodynamics, economics, and the energy required to run a modern technological civilization. They are operating on pure emotion.
Thanks!
The consortium calculates it can get the cost of a nuclear power station producing 440 MWe to about GBP1.75 billion, ($2.29 billion)($5,200/Kw) which means being able to sell electricity at below GBP60/MWh ($78.44/MWh).
They should do better than $78.44/MWh to be competitive.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.