I'm not filled with optimism about this concept. Let's work backwards from crash safety (say a reactor on a truck getting t-boned by a freight train). The radioactive material needs to be held in an armored containment to avoid release. That would have to be roughly comparable to CASTOR containers in terms of its resilience. But these containers have limited capability of passive thermal energy dissipation (Google finds models that handle 10kW to 45kW thermal power generated in the interior). This would be approximately the ceiling for the direct thermal power output that is still reduced by limited efficiency of heat-to-power conversion.

This is admittedly napkin math, but it should be good enough to set expectations.

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jillesvangurp 3 days ago | parent [-]

You are thinking accidents. I think we need to be thinking deliberate attempts to compromise these things and all the security measures needed to mitigate against that. And most importantly, the cost associated with that. Which comes on top of already significant cost.

The naive notion of we'll just ship these all over the place by the thousands and it's going to be fine is not going to withstand a lot of critical thinking very long.

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gmueckl 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I was indeed not thinking about deliberate attacks. But that doesn't change the result much as I assume that the CASTOR containers that I used as reference are designed to withstand all of these worst case scenarios.

	▲	conorcleary 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Unfortunately, this chain of messages underscores the importance of keeping humans in check with eachother, and the machine.

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altcognito 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Hundreds of thousands if we're talking about meeting growing demand. Which doesn't give me a lot of hope for solar either though.

	▲	jillesvangurp 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Solar already runs circles around nuclear when it comes to cost. Typically combined with batteries. The combination is popular and cost effective. With nuclear it's all rosy and optimistic. But also almost 100% hypothetical. And the industry has a piss poor record delivering on its promises. 200-300% cost overruns are routine. We won't see more than a handful small small nuclear reactors for years to come. We might get to hundreds by the 2040s or so. Maybe growing to thousands or even tens of thousands by the 2050s under the optimistic scenario. Most of these things have the power output of a handful of wind turbines, of which we have close to half a million right now around the world with more coming online all the time. The challenge here is that wind turbines are just stupidly cheap and scalable at this point and still getting better. SMRs will remain very niche for a long time even if they do get their cost levels under control. Which is a big if. Thousands of these things would barely move the needle in terms of power output. Essentially all of the expected growth in electricity demand for the next few decades is going to be met by wind and solar supported by batteries.