| ▲ | Tiny reactors could one day power towns, campuses; community input will be key(theconversation.com) |
| 31 points by rntn 14 hours ago | 36 comments |
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| ▲ | dwood_dev 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| As much as I am a proponent of nuclear, it's time has past. It's already non-competitive with solar + battery for any new start builds. I doubt a single commercial installation would exist of these microreactors before battery and solar/battery costs drop another 50-80%. Even hydro will have issues competing in 20 years. |
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| ▲ | homeonthemtn 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As some one with a long winter, I assure you solar is not a cure-all, especially if you receive significant snow or low altitude cloud cover. Batteries, as well, are impacted by the cold in their own ways. Is a tiny reactor the answer? Probably not. But energy at a constant rate all year round that also self warms? That sounds pretty good to me. | | |
| ▲ | kjs3 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Isn't that a power transfer problem? By that, I mean wouldn't the money spent to invent (they don't exist) these 'mini-reactors' be better spent optimizing the transfer and storage capability of solar, wind, geothermal and tidal power generation to non-optimal locations? I mean, sure, I probably want a nice chunk of fissionables at McMurdo Station, maybe someplace like Svalbard, but as a general solution it seems a poor investment. | |
| ▲ | sudoshred 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nuclear has advantages, but no one will vote in favor of a small chance of nearby catastrophe… given the choice. | | |
| ▲ | kjs3 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's an utterly ridiculous assertion (at least in the US). All one needs to do is claim "job creation" and "increase the tax base" and there will be thousands of small/mid sized town desperately courting your investment dollars, even if you're up front about "this will probably poison your town for centuries and turn your kids into zombies". | | |
| ▲ | toast0 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If that were enough, I think we'd have a lot more nuclear plants in construction. The problem with this theory is it takes too long between the step where the boosters sell the town with job creation and when the plant can't be cancelled. If you get a city on board today, chances are you won't have a permit in 10 years, and you need to keep them on board the whole time until the permit is issued or they'll derail the permit. It's better to keep them on board at least until the reactor is fueled... but once it's fueled, the jobs engine will probably sustain itself. | |
| ▲ | burnt-resistor 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Giga datacenters plopped down in unincorporated areas and small towns will bribe local officials, suck up all the water, raise local electricity rates, pollute the air with on-site natural gas generators, and given the opportunity, play Russian roulette with SMRs. |
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| ▲ | credit_guy 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm also a proponent of nuclear. And I agree that nuclear is not competitive with solar. But we haven't really invested in nuclear for more than 4 decades now. Nuclear is just a technology. There is no reason to think nuclear capital costs need to be forever locked at the current levels. China has at least three times lower capital costs for nuclear power plants (judging by the cost of the Karachi units 2-3 at $9.5 BN [1] vs the Vogtle units 3-4 at $36.8 BN [2]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karachi_Nuclear_Power_Complex [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... | | |
| ▲ | patapong 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I see it as an issue of path dependency - we had the option to invest in nuclear but did not. Instead we invested in solar, wind and battery. Because of this, the latter is now the better alternative, and it makes more sense to further capitalize on that path rather than "reviving" a previous path for untold billions and tens of years. | |
| ▲ | kjs3 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | China has at least three times lower capital costs for nuclear power plants Well, yes. When consider 'health and safety' as a 'down on the priority list' requirement, there are any number of cost cutting opportunities available to you. | |
| ▲ | pstuart 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Bespoke behemoth power plants may have the advantage size in the ability to generate power but they seem to be impossible to bring in on schedule and under budget. Small Modular Reactors should upend that hegemony through mass production but so far still can't compete. SMRs would be perfect for converting every single existing coal fired plant and allow our power generation to go carbon free in record time. I'm pro-renewables but believe we need as many energy options as possible. | | |
| ▲ | burnt-resistor 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Feel free to place an SMR in your neighborhood on a flatbed truck guarded only by one part-time security guard. | | |
| ▲ | pstuart 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I wasn't suggesting that approach, but yes, security will always be a concern. |
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| ▲ | Workaccount2 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Nuclear sucks because the regulatory environment is totally insane. If the NRC went over the regulations with a bit of common sense, reactors would be dramatically less expensive. | | |
| ▲ | amanaplanacanal 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | People say that, but which regulations are the problem? Nobody ever suggests what exact changes need to be made. | | |
| ▲ | burnt-resistor 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Perhaps they'd like another Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or Fukushima instead. It's ignorant people who complain about "regulations" as a monolithic, monochromatic evil MacGuffin that exist merely to stop progress rather than encompassing health and safety regulations written in blood and graves. I remember my coworker who had to destructively flame test half of the wire nuts he sold to a nuclear energy concern by verifying they self-extinguished within X seconds. Rigor might be expensive, but lives, health, and peace of mind are worth more even if techbros and billionaires don't think so. |
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| ▲ | tjmc 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I can see a future for microreactors powering container ships. Outside nuclear subs and aircraft carriers there are already nuclear powered icebreakers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_icebreaker | | |
| ▲ | privatelypublic 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yea, micro reactors sound like a great idea for pollution control. But, given how many ships get seized every year trying to fake inspections and a dozen other things- the only way this works out is a modern version of Clipper ships (with less sinkings). Large premiums for getting your cargo across the ocean faster. How much faster, is for somebody more knowledgeable than me to answer. And now politics comes into play: these ships would have to not only have significant permanent armament, but given significant latitude to use lethal force. |
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| ▲ | mrheosuper 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why not both, you don't want to put all egg in 1 basket. |
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| ▲ | cool_dude85 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The biggest risk of these kind of micro reactors is what happens when they are abandoned and / or receive no investment, maintenance, repairs, etc. for years or decades. What is a catastrophic failure like in that case? For example, a water and sewer utility near me, serving a similar scale customer base as one of these reactors (a few hundred to a thousand or so), just had to get put into receivership. All the infrastructure has been falling apart for years and the utility had not been investing anything into upkeep, putting its own customers in danger. What if they had owned one of these reactors? |
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| ▲ | barney54 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Community input is nice, but we first need working small reactors. Until we see that there is no need to talk about community input. And so far small reactors keep taking longer to get built than estimates. |
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| ▲ | b_e_n_t_o_n 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why don't we just put a bunch of reactors on the moon? Seems safer than putting them on earth. |
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| ▲ | slowmovintarget 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | When we need to power things on the moon, we'll put them there, too. For now, we need to generate the power near (within a few tens of miles) where it must be used. The reason for this is that as we transmit power, we lose some as heat. The further we transmit, the more we lose. | | |
| ▲ | b_e_n_t_o_n 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why can't we just connect a really long cable from the moon back to earth and wrap it in insulation?? | | |
| ▲ | slau 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | There’s a 50k km difference between the shortest and longest answer to “how far is the moon?”, depending on orbit and phase. The distance can change by about 75m per second. I don’t know of a reel that can spool up a cable at 270 km/h. Our current longest power cable is 5376 m long. So we’re only 406k km short of bridging the gap (our longest is only 0.0013% the length required). | | |
| ▲ | b_e_n_t_o_n 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | if we can split an atom we can make a really long cable surely | |
| ▲ | patapong 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Maybe we can offload all bitcoin mining to the moon instead, and just transmit the winning blocks to the earth via radio instead. That way, we can outsource the tremendous emissions caused by bitcoin mining, and use the extra capacity on earth to cut down on fossil fuels. Half /s |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| My god, if there is one thing we need less of in America it’s community fucking input. Reactors in towns are dumb. They make sense in remote locations where solar doesn’t work, e.g. West Australian or seabed mining, or on the Moon. |
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| ▲ | arghandugh 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| No, they won’t. |
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| ▲ | greenie_beans 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | why not? | | |
| ▲ | arghandugh 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | greenie_beans 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | very unconvincing argument and not helpful at all | | |
| ▲ | arghandugh 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which means I’m adding exactly as much to the world as “there will be a semi-truck sized semi-portable nuclear reactor that will somehow work, be politically viable outside of totalitarian regimes, and provide meaningful amounts of localized grid power within our lifetimes” Zip fucking zero percent chance, forever. Move on. | | |
| ▲ | greenie_beans 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | seems you're adding much, much less to the world, except a cargo ship full of toxic behavior | | |
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| ▲ | rogerb 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| No discussion of shielding in this article :( |
