Well operated, mature nuclear power plants can easily achieve 90%+ uptime. I don’t think this is a huge issue.

In fact, the uptime of US nuclear power plants was above 90% for the last decade.

And even if a reactor goes offline, a power plant usually operates 2 to 4 reactors, so the entire plant continues operating.

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thinkcontext an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a brand new type, there's no way that equivalent operation to a decades old design with centuries of operational experience can be assumed. Presumably its been designed for high uptime but it would not be unusual for new technology like this to require some refinement.

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testing22321 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is 90% equal to 24x7, 365?

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sandworm101 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes. The refueling takes the most time but that is planned years in advance. A one-year planned outage every decade can still be 24/7/365 in the other nine years.

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p1mrx an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Natrium is expected to spend around 1 month refueling every 24 months.

	▲	sandworm101 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		So that is say 5% downtime. Add in time for upgrades and refurbishments, and refueling periods alone are bang on the 10% downtime number.

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bronson an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah yes, the ol' GitHub method of reporting. "When we're up, we have lots of nines!"

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veverkap 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unless they hire Homer Simpson.....