US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

NuScale will get the final approval nearly six years after starting the process.

Read the whole story

 

[OrangeCream]

SMNRs are a fundamentally flawed technology. They don't benefit from efficiencies of scale and can't benefit from manufacturing economies of scale, because an SMNR is still more expensive than natural gas.

Rate Payers are tired of the financial chicanery of Return on Rate Base for extremely expensive capital projects. Don't trust financial guarantees like cost caps written by toilet paper balance sheets. Look at how that turned out for Westinghouse/Toshiba.

Gas becomes more expensive if you actually measured the greenhouse gas cost, ie the cost of wildfires, floods, global civil unrest, food shortages, heatwaves, severe winter storms, power outages, flight delays, etc.

 

[fcrary]

I didn't see this in the article but may have simply missed it: How much energy can each module generate and for how long? How many modules can be combined in one plant?

It's supposed to be 60 MW per module, and I don't think there's any limit on the number of modules which can be combined. They're independent, so you're just combining the electrical current they produce.

 

[ORcoder]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

You are mostly right though I’d like to point out that it’s not so much base load that we need to complement renewables, as much as it is flexible load. Traditional base load is slow to start and stop, has high capital costs and low operating costs. This doesn’t complement renewables well which also have high capital costs versus fixed costs, and need plants to pick up rapidly for them.
Unfortunately this means renewables and nuclear don’t complement each other very well.

 

[ORcoder]

I didn't see this in the article but may have simply missed it: How much energy can each module generate and for how long? How many modules can be combined in one plant?

It's supposed to be 60 MW per module, and I don't think there's any limit on the number of modules which can be combined. They're independent, so you're just combining the electrical current they produce.

77 MWe, and they intend to put up to 12 in the same structure.

 

[Epimetheus_Secundus]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

The NREL has a great video about this

https://www.nrel.gov/solar/market-resea ... -cost.html

see video under Levelized Cost of Solar Plus Storage heading

See the LCOE mwh figures at 6:15

 

[sgoldwater]

There's interest in these for making Canada's bitumen deposits less carbon intensive to exploit...

 

[Shlazzargh]

100% Dead On Arrival. I do not expect to see a single one of these delivered at a cost-competitive basis to combined cycle natural gas or renewables.

Initial estimates have it within a few percentage points of natural gas in price per megawatt, both from the manufacturer and the operator of the first project these are supposed to go into.
Personally, I think this type of design has a far better chance of being on budget than traditional nuclear construction.

You can't always assume that there will _be_ natural gas infrastructure or even cost effective renewables where these things can be deployed. There have been many discussions about using small scale reactors in Alaska where in most of the state we do not have natural gas available nor are most renewables a cost effective fit. Instead, we have a bunch of coal or naptha/diesel fired generators. There are firm plans to place a small scale reactor up here at Eielson AFB instead of their coal fired plant for meeting the needs of the base.

Many of the interior Alaska villages also have to bring all the fuel for their generators they need for the whole year up by barge in the early spring and that makes their electricity really, really expensive. Something like a small scale reactor might be great for a consortium of two or three communities and the amount of power it would put out would be just about right.

 

[ORcoder]

100% Dead On Arrival. I do not expect to see a single one of these delivered at a cost-competitive basis to combined cycle natural gas or renewables.

Initial estimates have it within a few percentage points of natural gas in price per megawatt, both from the manufacturer and the operator of the first project these are supposed to go into.
Personally, I think this type of design has a far better chance of being on budget than traditional nuclear construction.

You can't always assume that there will _be_ natural gas infrastructure or even cost effective renewables where these things can be deployed. There have been many discussions about using small scale reactors in Alaska where in most of the state we do not have natural gas available nor are most renewables a cost effective fit. Instead, we have a bunch of coal or naptha/diesel fired generators. There are firm plans to place a small scale reactor up here at Eielson AFB instead of their coal fired plant for meeting the needs of the base.

Many of the interior Alaska villages also have to bring all the fuel for their generators they need for the whole year up by barge in the early spring and that makes their electricity really, really expensive. Something like a small scale reactor might be great for a consortium of two or three communities and the amount of power it would put out would be just about right.

I agree, though a lot of those applications will need something smaller than 77 MWe of this reactor. There are other ventures working on 1-20 MWe reactors that might be a good fit for that sector.

 

[fcrary]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

You are mostly right though I’d like to point out that it’s not so much base load that we need to complement renewables, as much as it is flexible load. Traditional base load is slow to start and stop, has high capital costs and low operating costs. This doesn’t complement renewables well which also have high capital costs versus fixed costs, and need plants to pick up rapidly for them.
Unfortunately this means renewables and nuclear don’t complement each other very well.

I'm not sure about the costs, but starting and stopping may not be a problem. You just need a part of the usage to be something you can run when power is available. That is, run the reactor at a constant output and use or not use the extra output for things like carbon capture and synthetic methane production.

 

[ZenBeam]

Here's hoping this pans out, and gives us one more low-carbon power source knob to turn, to use to replace higher carbon sources.

Do these have any capability to vary their power generation, trading lower output for a longer lifetime? If so, how much can they vary it?

They probably won’t be great at it- likely can bypass the turbines to load follow as necessary (like many current nuclear plants can), but it won’t help fuel life. Even if they load follow by lowering the power of the reactor, which is possible but slower, thanks to fuel damage it also probably won’t save much uranium.

Designs that will be better at this are Natrium, which incorporates thermal storage for load following, and molten salt reactors, which don’t have to worry about fuel damage.

I'm not thinking of load following, I'm thinking of yearly variation. Batteries can follow load. Can these be shut down for four or six months straight, and last 50% or 100% longer?

 

[MarkJR]

On the web site you can put a $100 deposit on the home version. Im going to get going on my cooling pond.

 

[fcrary]

Here's hoping this pans out, and gives us one more low-carbon power source knob to turn, to use to replace higher carbon sources.

Do these have any capability to vary their power generation, trading lower output for a longer lifetime? If so, how much can they vary it?

They probably won’t be great at it- likely can bypass the turbines to load follow as necessary (like many current nuclear plants can), but it won’t help fuel life. Even if they load follow by lowering the power of the reactor, which is possible but slower, thanks to fuel damage it also probably won’t save much uranium.

Designs that will be better at this are Natrium, which incorporates thermal storage for load following, and molten salt reactors, which don’t have to worry about fuel damage.

I'm not thinking of load following, I'm thinking of yearly variation. Batteries can follow load. Can these be shut down for four or six months straight, and last 50% or 100% longer?

They can be shut down, and while they're shut down they aren't using any fuel. So, yea. If you only operated them six months a year, the fuel would last twice as long. I'm not sure why you'd want to do that (unless you're thinking of running them only during winter and you're in Alaska) and you'd have some real staffing issues (you aren't going to lay off the crew for six months and expect them to come back afterwards.)

 

[ORcoder]

Here's hoping this pans out, and gives us one more low-carbon power source knob to turn, to use to replace higher carbon sources.

Do these have any capability to vary their power generation, trading lower output for a longer lifetime? If so, how much can they vary it?

They probably won’t be great at it- likely can bypass the turbines to load follow as necessary (like many current nuclear plants can), but it won’t help fuel life. Even if they load follow by lowering the power of the reactor, which is possible but slower, thanks to fuel damage it also probably won’t save much uranium.

Designs that will be better at this are Natrium, which incorporates thermal storage for load following, and molten salt reactors, which don’t have to worry about fuel damage.

I'm not thinking of load following, I'm thinking of yearly variation. Batteries can follow load. Can these be shut down for four or six months straight, and last 50% or 100% longer?

Yes, you can do that.
Operation costs are so low compared to capital costs that it probably will not happen (edit: or it will happen but the value you are getting out of those summer renewables is dubious), but I see where you are going with that.

 

[RickVS]

I am curious how this compares in size to the nuclear reactors onboard carriers and subs. Also, this would be even better if we had good solutions for used fuel disposal.

 

[ORcoder]

I am curious how this compares in size to the nuclear reactors onboard carriers and subs. Also, this would be even better if we had good solutions for used fuel disposal.

We have good solutions for used fuel disposal- there is so little we can store it on the site of the power plant and it’s not a big deal.
We could have great solutions for fuel disposal, with either reprocessing into MOX fuel or waste burning salt reactors, just gotta allow/invest in those approaches.

 

[ORcoder]

I am curious how this compares in size to the nuclear reactors onboard carriers and subs. Also, this would be even better if we had good solutions for used fuel disposal.

I think naval reactors are around 50 MWe to 200 MWe

 

[fcrary]

I am curious how this compares in size to the nuclear reactors onboard carriers and subs. Also, this would be even better if we had good solutions for used fuel disposal.

They're much larger relative to the power they produce. But that's because the navy reactors use much more highly enriched uranium.

Fuel disposal depends entirely on how much waste separation and processing you want to do. In principle, you could make the problem fairly easy by separating the long-lifetime and high radioactivity isotopes. But currently the US doesn't do any processing or separation, and that makes the problem more difficult.

 

[fcrary]

I am curious how this compares in size to the nuclear reactors onboard carriers and subs. Also, this would be even better if we had good solutions for used fuel disposal.

I think naval reactors are around 50 MWe to 200 MWe

If that a fair comparison? I thought carriers used some of the mechanical power directly, so they get more benefit than the electric power output implies.

 

[SubWoofer2]

Off to re-read Marc Laidlaw's "Dad's Nuke".

 

[itfa]

100% Dead On Arrival. I do not expect to see a single one of these delivered at a cost-competitive basis to combined cycle natural gas or renewables.

Initial estimates have it within a few percentage points of natural gas in price per megawatt, both from the manufacturer and the operator of the first project these are supposed to go into.
Personally, I think this type of design has a far better chance of being on budget than traditional nuclear construction.

You can't always assume that there will _be_ natural gas infrastructure or even cost effective renewables where these things can be deployed. There have been many discussions about using small scale reactors in Alaska where in most of the state we do not have natural gas available nor are most renewables a cost effective fit. Instead, we have a bunch of coal or naptha/diesel fired generators. There are firm plans to place a small scale reactor up here at Eielson AFB instead of their coal fired plant for meeting the needs of the base.

Many of the interior Alaska villages also have to bring all the fuel for their generators they need for the whole year up by barge in the early spring and that makes their electricity really, really expensive. Something like a small scale reactor might be great for a consortium of two or three communities and the amount of power it would put out would be just about right.

Also, look at cost of electricity in natural gas dependent Europe right now. It may be cheap for us in the US right now, but we are fortunate to be in a position where an asshole running a third world country can't affect our energy production as much as elsewhere in the world. A lot of people across the world would be quite happy with this type of energy production even at slightly higher prices.

 

[ae35unit]

Here's hoping this pans out, and gives us one more low-carbon power source knob to turn, to use to replace higher carbon sources.

Do these have any capability to vary their power generation, trading lower output for a longer lifetime? If so, how much can they vary it?

They probably won’t be great at it- likely can bypass the turbines to load follow as necessary (like many current nuclear plants can), but it won’t help fuel life. Even if they load follow by lowering the power of the reactor, which is possible but slower, thanks to fuel damage it also probably won’t save much uranium.

Designs that will be better at this are Natrium, which incorporates thermal storage for load following, and molten salt reactors, which don’t have to worry about fuel damage.

A plant will have 6-12 reactors. Each can be throttled independently to load follow.

And refueling downtime can be rotated between them, so the whole plant never needs to go offline for refueling, just one module at a time.

 

[ZenBeam]

Here's hoping this pans out, and gives us one more low-carbon power source knob to turn, to use to replace higher carbon sources.

Do these have any capability to vary their power generation, trading lower output for a longer lifetime? If so, how much can they vary it?

They probably won’t be great at it- likely can bypass the turbines to load follow as necessary (like many current nuclear plants can), but it won’t help fuel life. Even if they load follow by lowering the power of the reactor, which is possible but slower, thanks to fuel damage it also probably won’t save much uranium.

Designs that will be better at this are Natrium, which incorporates thermal storage for load following, and molten salt reactors, which don’t have to worry about fuel damage.

I'm not thinking of load following, I'm thinking of yearly variation. Batteries can follow load. Can these be shut down for four or six months straight, and last 50% or 100% longer?

They can be shut down, and while they're shut down they aren't using any fuel. So, yea. If you only operated them six months a year, the fuel would last twice as long. I'm not sure why you'd want to do that (unless you're thinking of running them only during winter and you're in Alaska) and you'd have some real staffing issues (you aren't going to lay off the crew for six months and expect them to come back afterwards.)

Solar arrays where you can sell all the power all year long are pretty much a no-brainer. Solar arrays that are only needed a month or two a year, and when they're least productive, because the other ten months already have enough solar+wind generation to provide all the energy needed, are less valuable.

 

[Epimetheus_Secundus]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

You are mostly right though I’d like to point out that it’s not so much base load that we need to complement renewables, as much as it is flexible load. Traditional base load is slow to start and stop, has high capital costs and low operating costs. This doesn’t complement renewables well which also have high capital costs versus fixed costs, and need plants to pick up rapidly for them.
Unfortunately this means renewables and nuclear don’t complement each other very well.

That's only true when you are talking about legacy nuclear. LWR cannot load follow (salt can), traditional custom LWR has very high capital costs (SMR's do not). You didn't throw in safety issues but go ahead and include them - they have big safety issues.

If you want to argue that old style, expensive LWR's are not competitive to *anything* you're probably right. But those arguments are really only valid against the older generations. The newer reactors designs, especially the newer salt designs, (assuming they get approved) don't have those shortcomings.

People used to argue that PEV's would never work because they were expensive, the technology was not developed, batteries were heavy and would never last. And all of that is true of the older generations of electric vehicles at that time. Glad there were people that were able to read newer publications as they developed and updated their thinking. Technology evolves, don't get stuck in the 70's.

 

[ORcoder]

I am curious how this compares in size to the nuclear reactors onboard carriers and subs. Also, this would be even better if we had good solutions for used fuel disposal.

I think naval reactors are around 50 MWe to 200 MWe

If that a fair comparison? I thought carriers used some of the mechanical power directly, so they get more benefit than the electric power output implies.

Yeah it is complicated by the direct drive situation for sure. Wikipedia says they can be as big as 500 MW thermal.

 

[C.M. Allen]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

Literally *NO ONE* actually doing renewable work is 'forgetting to consider storage.' There are two issues, both of which already have solutions that work just fine, and both help with baseload management. You have short-term localized weather issues, which even a modicum of storage can handle just fine by smoothing over the production dips. And then you have longer, regional weather issues, which HVDC interconnects handle just fine, by allowing the mass transmission of power from separate and unaffected weather regions.

You'll notice, there are no further 'issues' with renewables beyond those two. The scapegoats that anti-renewable complainers keep trotting out are tired, idiotic arguments that were barely relevant in the first place and are the hallmark of someone completely clueless of the industry now. Solar and wind are both fully capable of supporting all of humanity's power needs. What's *lacking* is the production of the hardware on a scale large enough to meet our insatiable power appetites.

 

[fellow human]

On the web site you can put a $100 deposit on the home version. Im going to get going on my cooling pond.

I'm sure one of these would make a great pool heater

 

[raxx7]

[
Yeah it is complicated by the direct drive situation for sure. Wikipedia says they can be as big as 500 MW thermal.

500 MW thermal would be about 170 MW mechanical power which could be about 170 MW electrical if all mechanical power was used to drive a generator (a generator that big will be at least 98% efficient).

 

[ORcoder]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

Literally *NO ONE* actually doing renewable work is 'forgetting to consider storage.' There are two issues, both of which already have solutions that work just fine, and both help with baseload management. You have short-term localized weather issues, which even a modicum of storage can handle just fine by smoothing over the production dips. And then you have longer, regional weather issues, which HVDC interconnects handle just fine, by allowing the mass transmission of power from separate and unaffected weather regions.

You'll notice, there are no further 'issues' with renewables beyond those two. The scapegoats that anti-renewable complainers keep trotting out are tired, idiotic arguments that were barely relevant in the first place and are the hallmark of someone completely clueless of the industry now. Solar and wind are both fully capable of supporting all of humanity's power needs. What's *lacking* is the production of the hardware on a scale large enough to meet our insatiable power appetites.

HVDC is doing a lot of work in this scenario- I mean I’m not necessarily against it but it’s going to take a lot of work to get the cross region HVDC capacity to deal with seasonal fluctuations with 90+% renewable grids and we’ve barely started. In some cases the capital buildout required might make nuclear cheaper in some places

 

[Siosphere]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I believe that NuScale provides energy for less than traditional nuclear, but not by a huge margin. Coal/Natural Gas will still be cheaper if it is available, but I'm thinking more for places that don't have access to cheap fossil fuels. I know that nuclear is competitive with traditional coal/gas power plants in areas where the fossil fuels are not abundant.

Also, hopefully, legislation will be passed that ups the Carbon Tax on traditional power plants, to where even in places where fossil fuels are cheap, nuclear will become the better option.

 

[AmorImpermissus]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

You are mostly right though I’d like to point out that it’s not so much base load that we need to complement renewables, as much as it is flexible load. Traditional base load is slow to start and stop, has high capital costs and low operating costs. This doesn’t complement renewables well which also have high capital costs versus fixed costs, and need plants to pick up rapidly for them.
Unfortunately this means renewables and nuclear don’t complement each other very well.

I wish someone would work as hard on making photo- or wind- generated water electrolysis happen, and a safe way to store the hydrogen without it all leaking out. Imagine being able to use wind or solar panels to power your house in the day while also electrolysing leftover water. Then when it's dark or still, you flip a switch, which burns the electrolyzed hydrogen for fuel and produces nothing but pure water as waste =\.

 

[mhalpern]

100% Dead On Arrival. I do not expect to see a single one of these delivered at a cost-competitive basis to combined cycle natural gas or renewables.

Initial estimates have it within a few percentage points of natural gas in price per megawatt, both from the manufacturer and the operator of the first project these are supposed to go into.
Personally, I think this type of design has a far better chance of being on budget than traditional nuclear construction.

I think most people here would agree with "Personally, I think this type of design has a far better chance of being on budget than traditional nuclear construction." But unfortunately that's not saying much...

it MIGHT be viable on a (cargo) ship, but I doubt it

 

[mhalpern]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

You are mostly right though I’d like to point out that it’s not so much base load that we need to complement renewables, as much as it is flexible load. Traditional base load is slow to start and stop, has high capital costs and low operating costs. This doesn’t complement renewables well which also have high capital costs versus fixed costs, and need plants to pick up rapidly for them.
Unfortunately this means renewables and nuclear don’t complement each other very well.

I wish someone would work as hard on making photo- or wind- generated water electrolysis happen, and a safe way to store the hydrogen without it all leaking out. Imagine being able to use wind or solar panels to power your house in the day while also electrolysing leftover water. Then when it's dark or still, you flip a switch, which burns the electrolyzed hydrogen for fuel and produces nothing but pure water as waste =\.

or you know, charge a battery and be 3x more efficient in your energy storage process

 

[idelaney]

Back in the 1980s, Analog magazine published an article entitled "How to Make Your Own A-Bomb and Wake Up the Neighborhood".
Now they can update it and call it "How to Make Your Own Atomic Reactor and Light Up the Neighbourhood".

 

[xWidget]

You are mostly right though I’d like to point out that it’s not so much base load that we need to complement renewables, as much as it is flexible load. Traditional base load is slow to start and stop, has high capital costs and low operating costs. This doesn’t complement renewables well which also have high capital costs versus fixed costs, and need plants to pick up rapidly for them.
Unfortunately this means renewables and nuclear don’t complement each other very well.

I wish someone would work as hard on making photo- or wind- generated water electrolysis happen, and a safe way to store the hydrogen without it all leaking out. Imagine being able to use wind or solar panels to power your house in the day while also electrolysing leftover water. Then when it's dark or still, you flip a switch, which burns the electrolyzed hydrogen for fuel and produces nothing but pure water as waste =\.

From what I can tell the storage and transportation is really the main issue.

I'm curious if saltwater purification through electrolysis is cheap enough to be worth it if the electricity is very slightly negatively priced, or if there's other hardware consumables/maintenance from dealing with the saltwater that makes it prohibitive.

 

[Ozy]

As you go smaller in plant size, the safety, shielding, and regulatory burden becomes a larger percentage of the plant cost, not to mention overall balance of plant. If instead you're just using a bunch of these to replace a single larger core in the same size plant, now you've just multiplied all of your failure points.

Until we actually see these built and operated at the cost that they promise, all of those estimates are as believable as fusion power on the grid by the '30s.

 

[azazel1024]

Would have been even better 20 years ago. But then again, so would EVERY non-fossil fuel-based power source being rolled out at scale. We're just so late on everything, and most of the blame lies with politicians allergic to governing and rich, subsidized industry allergic to changing.

With the first of these scheduled to go online in, maybe, 8 years, we could see this "at scale" in 10-15-20 years?

Also, you say the blame lies with govt and industry, but neglect to mention the reason the article mentions about why even this first proposed reactor might not get built: money.

On your last, unlikely. Succeed maybe. But Gates and I think Berkshire are backing NuScales first power plant. Not sure if they are planning a single SMR or if they are planning several at the site (I think several). I am pretty confident now that nuscale has the approval the project will succeed in so far as the first reactors will get built and installed. Whether multiple power plants and many reactors happen or not remains to be seen.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

This is good news! I’m hopping that TerraPower can get their Traveling Wave Reactor approved too. The first one was supposed to be built in 2020, but that was cancelled.

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower,

"Once profits are maximized we do intend to lower bills"
Corpamerica

 

[wagnerrp]

I am curious how this compares in size to the nuclear reactors onboard carriers and subs. Also, this would be even better if we had good solutions for used fuel disposal.

I think naval reactors are around 50 MWe to 200 MWe

If that a fair comparison? I thought carriers used some of the mechanical power directly, so they get more benefit than the electric power output implies.

It's not like electrical generators are particularly inefficient. A turbine is going to be capable of the same output whether it's driving a screw or a generator.

 

[wagnerrp]

If we can get smaller modular reactors out in use, and peoples energy bills lower, perhaps public perception of nuclear can change and we can expand more and more.

What makes you think these will lower energy bills?

I don't know about the nuscale - but some newer reactor designs are showing LCOE numbers that are competitive to fossil or renewable plus storage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_salt_reactor

Economics
The capital cost of the stable salt reactor was estimated at $1,950/kW by an independent UK nuclear engineering firm.[4] For comparison, the capital cost of a modern pulverised coal power station in the United States is $3,250/kW and the cost of large-scale nuclear is $5,500/kW.[5] Further reductions to this overnight cost are expected for modular factory-based construction.

This low capital cost results in a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of $44.64/MWh with substantial potential for further reductions, because of the greater simplicity and intrinsic safety of the SSR.

Personally, I'm rooting for TAE technology's fusion play. H + Boron is coolness.

I think storage is something a lot of people forget to consider. If you want 100% renewable then you have to have enough storage to cover the load when there's no sun AND no wind for hours, or days at a time. So even if this was 3-4 times as expensive as Wind or Solar it would provide consistent output regardless what the weather was doing, so it might be on par or cheaper than Wind or Solar once you include a reasonable amount of storage (say 24 hours minimum).

Green energy accounts for a small enough percentage of the total energy grid right now that storage isn't really needed. We have base load being provided by Hydro, coal, gas. So fluctuations in weather are annoying but not devastating. When there's zero base load power being generated and the power from wind and solar can randomly drop to zero then that's a big problem.

Literally *NO ONE* actually doing renewable work is 'forgetting to consider storage.' There are two issues, both of which already have solutions that work just fine, and both help with baseload management. You have short-term localized weather issues, which even a modicum of storage can handle just fine by smoothing over the production dips. And then you have longer, regional weather issues, which HVDC interconnects handle just fine, by allowing the mass transmission of power from separate and unaffected weather regions.

You'll notice, there are no further 'issues' with renewables beyond those two. The scapegoats that anti-renewable complainers keep trotting out are tired, idiotic arguments that were barely relevant in the first place and are the hallmark of someone completely clueless of the industry now. Solar and wind are both fully capable of supporting all of humanity's power needs. What's *lacking* is the production of the hardware on a scale large enough to meet our insatiable power appetites.

HVDC is doing a lot of work in this scenario- I mean I’m not necessarily against it but it’s going to take a lot of work to get the cross region HVDC capacity to deal with seasonal fluctuations with 90+% renewable grids and we’ve barely started. In some cases the capital buildout required might make nuclear cheaper in some places

How much work will it be to build a few thousand of these SNRs to otherwise replace our "baseload" using more traditional strategies? And we haven't started at all. The first prototype is a decade away, and volume production is at least two. Is a solution half a century away actually a solution?