WHAT ARE SMRs?
The concept animating SMRs is quite simple. Break down nuclear technology into bite-sized 60-MW components that can be strung together as needed. Absolute cost per module is low, reducing sticker shock for utilities. Delivery of small units can be made using conventional truck and rail. Sites can be located on small plots, including existing brownfield former coal plants.
Developed as a concept in the 1990s, thirty years later, there is yet to be a working commercial unit, with the soonest one now promised for 2027. Of the two demonstration plants in the U.S., NuScale in Utah and TerraForm in Wyoming, NuScale has to date received the most funding, including a recent life-saving $1.4-billion grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, following a long series of delays and cost overruns.
Cost estimates for the 720-MW plant (i.e., twelve 60-unit modules) now total $6.1 billion and counting. At a per-unit cost of more than $8,000/mwh, the NuScale plant is uncompetitive but argued as forgivable for a first-of-its-kind operation.
While NuScale claims that it will ultimately deliver sustainable costs, critics allege that SMR construction costs and cost per kilowatt-hour will miss forecasts by a wide margin.
Just because China is doing is not a reason we should do anything.
We should do it because energy is a huge input into the economy and we don’t have any alternatives that can provide energy in the amount or as safe and clean as nuclear.
There are new designs that can’t melt down, and don’t rely on pumping or cooling systems to be operational to shut down safely.
The left wants us to move to Electric Vehicles (EVs) yesterday. And I think once the kinks have been worked out and the range is sufficient we probably should.
What convinces me is watching Dutchsense’s youtube videos on earthquakes. He isn’t against oil and gas, but he has a theory that earthquakes go to the weakest area of the crust and that’s often drill sites. But what convinced me is seeing just how many thousands and thousands of drill sites are in the west. It’s not sustainable, we need more sources of energy and nuclear fits the bill.
I also think we should have every metropolitan area of 50,000 or more build grid connector sites. Where a small nuclear reactor, the concrete encased, zero maintenance kinds can be trucked in and connected in the event of a disaster. And FEMA should have several of those on hand, perhaps stored regionally where they can truck them in and connect them in a very very short amount of time.
The mini nuclear reactors are interesting. Some are using nuclear waste as batteries with extremely long lives. And I understand they have great safety profiles as far as radiation emitted. These should be used for communications.
It’s a brand new world of abundant energy if we would only let it be.
IF it’s good for America and her People, look for the UniParty/DS to quash it.
“...abandoned, with two exceptions...”
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I guess those are the two being built in Georgia.
And of course the Obama administration handed over the U-233 technology to the PRC which intends to use it in their next generation of nuclear power plants for aircraft carriers.
SMR reactors make sense for remote locations without a large scale grid. The Koreans have the right idea. First and foremost stop the greens from using lawfare to inflate the costs of nuclear plant build out. Second standardized the design and build then again and again with per approved regulatory licences see point one. Once the design is fixed and standardized no suing to stop a licence from being granted. A combined build and operate licence at that. Third build out large reactors in a energy plant arrangement multiple reactors at the same location so they can share infrastructures like fuel pools, cooling lakes and rail yards plus security forces.
The Koreans and the Chinese are absolutely kicking our butts in the nuclear world. Korea can put up a nuclear plant cheaper than we can put up gas turbines and the power they produce is half the cost of gas turbine power here. They also reprocess their spent fuel so the only materials going to the geological storage are fission products that represent only 6% of the mass of spent fuel.
Been advocating for “SMR grid” and nimble “SMR’s” for over 40 years, not dissimilar to those on an aircraft carrier or submarine.
And yes, emergency mobile versions. Wipe out a station, roll in another. Malfunction, roll in another. Portions of the grid are taken out, go around the area.
We should also have led the way in recycling spent fuel/fuel rods.
But the leftist totalitarian FAKE “environmentalists/climate change” lobby bribes politicians so heavily, they would rather go along with mass global depopulation and a totalitarian one world government model.
As well, such energy independence would crush market prices for most commodities.
We should still do it.
I wonder how much land I required. I have some spre land out back and would put on on in the back 40. I would love the idea of powering part of the county. Beat the heck of solar panels.
“Unlimited” cheap power.
Just like the big reactors were supposed to provide.
The costs will be as high or higher IF they are ever brought on line.
BUT they can be a viable option. Lets just be honest: they won’t be cheap.
It absolutely should. But doesn’t. And we will all be sorry for it.
Are these the small thorium reactors scientists have been backing for more than a decade?
The lead smr is nuscale they are making small light water reactors like they have on nuclear submarines. they’re nothing new. They’ll likely be obsoleted by 4th gen nuclear reactors being developed in China. The US is doing work on the 4th gen reactors but its slow. Most federal funding goes to the light water reactors. Alas, the light water crowd controls US development.
No, there is no future in the US. I spent 25+ years in the industry and left it because the politicos caved the liars in the treehugger community.
Advanced designs will achieve nothing. Because the treehuggers successfully lied about the spent fuel waste issue. It is not a problem, just do what all other countries do: chemically dissolve: take out the fuel that is still good and sequester the high-level waste crappola and bury it. Cut out the stupidity that it has the be buried for 10K+ years.
Until any nuke design can throw this entire argument out, show the treehuggers for the liars they are, nuclear has no place here.